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Venice! By far the most scenic city I visited. Just as it is shown in all the movies, canals everywhere, old buildings, tons and tons of people in the streets and the smell of pizza.

My hostel is quite the joke. It is under renovations at the moment so some of the rooms have no doors, the mattresses have reports of bed bugs, the entrance door opens into an empty cold cement basement and there is no reception desk. We have to pack up our bags everyday and place them in storage room since they claim to be doing work on the rooms during the day, however nothing seems to change when we get back in at night. The staff is very friendly, they make us free pasta dinner every night (most likely so we don't complain about the 'renovations' going on) and then take out everyone who wants to join to the dock down by a canal to have some drinks and mingle with all the other hostelers.

I met a very interesting Jew named Sandy. Now relax, she is the first to make all the Jewish references before anyone else. Very funny girl. She reminded me of the girl from American Pie because she starts off some stories with "This one time, at Jewish camp..." No joke. We get on great, and toured around the city today. We went over to Murano, to see some glass sculpture being made. Only two euro and we got to see the artist blow out the glass and all the steps it takes. Followed by some ice cream and another water bus (no metro, just boats) ride back to the main area of Venice.

The markets in Venice are great, all filled with glass figures and jewellery, glittery and colourful masks, and tons of leather bags. I have been good thus far with my purchases and have not made any dent in my funds but I am sure that will change before my time is up here.