And another year older....

Hello from Venice!!!!

Sorry about my lack of posts, internet has been MIA. We have arrived in Venice, Italy and today is my 24th birthday. WOW! Ok, let's back up a few days (or cities).

Brugges and Brussels, Belgium

AWESOME AWESOME AWESOME. A bit cold but didn't bother us, actually it was a nice break from hot weather. We ate lots of waffles, chocolate, drank amazing beer, visited some fun bars and enjoyed games of checkers and mancala on Joe's phone and had a fabulous time. One day we walked around the whole city and saw the Palace of Justice, the EU parliment building, and most importantly, had the best frites (fries) of our lives. Period. We then ventured on to Amsterdam, on another note, I would seriously consider not getting a rail pass next time around because it really does us no good. We have to reserve seats everywhere we go anyways because most of them are high speed trains and it was an expense I had not really budgeted for. Poohie.

Anyways, on to Amsterdam. Can I just say (and I know that Joe agrees) that Amsterdam is so much more than it is known for. BEAUTIFUL city! Our highlight was 1. Meeting up with Claire after almost a year for Joe and 7 months for me. 2. Taking a ride with the St. Nickolas Boat Club in the canals of Amsterdam and having a picnic lunch while on the boat. 3. Renting bikes and banching through the streets of Amsterdam like we owned them (mainly because this is what everyone else does) Remember when they taught you defensive driving in driver's ed-well I'm pretty sure that biking in the streets of Amsterdam is where defensive driving originated!

HA-we escaped without any major injury and had a fabulous time. We visited the Anne Frank Huis (personal life goal for myself) and the Van Gogh museum-both which were fascinating.

On our last night we ate at this little cafe right on a canal and just watched all the Amsterdamnian's (not the proper name I'm sure) cruise in their boats eating their picnic dinners-very cool.

Another thing that I have really appreciated about Europe is the really cool and large city parks that each city has. And it is not like parks in the US where people may use them but not really. People LOVE their park-it is packed and it is so pretty and fun and such a social place-I really like it. It is always a nice breath away from the city yet you are still in the city.

So, we rode the trains all day yesterday because we could not get a straight train from Amsterdam to Paris to catch our night train to Venice. Put it this way, Claire left three hours later than us and made it an hour before us. So we had a tight 60 minutes to catch two metros and make it to our night train but we did it!! Not without running with backpacks on and sweating profusely.


So we meet up with Claire and we are all in the same compartment, she grabbed sandwiches and eclaires for dinner and we end up only having one other woman in the compartment with us when we should have had six total-great right? WRONG. SO WRONG.

We were carefree and careless, well partially. We went to bed at 10:30PM and expected to wake up in Venice. If only it was so easy.

I woke up a few times early in the morning to our roommate going to the bathroom. No big deal right? Well after the second time, I work up to our cabin door wide open-hmm that's odd I thought, why didn't she lock it and shut it again? I look down and see my purse still under the seat so I think well it seems okay, and push the door as far shut as I could from my top bunk. We then wake up at 8:15AM and start to get all of our stuff together and the conductor gives us our passports back. Only then do we realize what has happened.

Claire's purse (which was laying on the bunk but right by the wide open door) was gone. Absolutely gone. Our roommate had left earlier but had said goodbye to me when I was coming back from the bathroom so we don't think she was the culprit but just some random person who saw an opportunity and capitalized on it.

So we spent the morning at the police station filing a report and calling all of Claire's credit card companies to cancel them. Not a great way to start out my birthday or the stint in Italy.

It could have been a lot worse. Her computer was lying underneath the blanket that her purse was on in her case, she had her phone, her ipod and her camera with her in the bunk because she had asked me to take a picture right before bed and the conductor had her passport overnight. So pretty much it was just money and credit cards and her diary that she had kept all year-big bummer.

We were really sad and hurt and felt stupid but really we locked the door last night and were really angry that our roommate couldn't do the same for us when she came back in this morning but I guess we should have put our valuables away. Oh well, what's done is done and we are safe and have met up with MAX!!!!

We are off to eat dinner and are drinking spritz's. We have already consumed gelato and plan on consuming A LOT more. I will try to post pictures tomorrow. I believe we are headed to the Islands of Lido and Murano tomorrow. WHOOP WHOOP!

Thanks for all the birthday wishes! Love and miss everyone!!!

Love from Venice,

Grace, Joe, Claire and Max