The sun was shining and the birds were chirping when we took our early morning walk of Venice. The city’s dirty walkways and many pigeons made us a little apprehensive about the city. However, the city charmed us with it’s many gorgeous bridges, fashionable stores, and beautiful seaside. Luckily, Venice’s narrow roads were not cluttered with tourists when we walked through the city. Since we had not been able to go to a church service since we have arrived in Italy, we thought it was a good idea to go to a church service in Venice that was in English. Once we ended our walking tour at the church, we found out that the service that we wanted to attend at the Catholic church was not in English but Italian. We agreed to attend the service in Italian with an open mind because it would be a new experience, and lately we were all for new experiences. During the service, no one looked like they knew what was going on except for Amelia. Most of us tried to listen to the sermon, but it was quite hard since it was in Italian and we were all exhausted from this trip. For communion, a little number of us went up to the priest to get a wafer. Communion was different for us. First of all there are two ways the priest can hand you the wafer: put it in the palm of your hands or place it in your mouth. Then, there was no wine. Honestly, who has heard of communion without wine. Oh, and just for the record wafers taste like Styrofoam.

            After church, we all headed off to San Marco Square to see the lovely pigeons. Pigeons are dirty and disgusting, so for many of us San Marco Square was not the place to be. We followed Amelia around for what seemed like forever until she found us a suitable restaurant that wasn’t too pricy. We all sat down for an early lunch. Then after lunch, we all had some free time to shop for gifts, get some gelato, go get money from an ATM, go up the Bell Tower to see the whole city of Venice laid out before you, or go get some American food from McDonald’s. We then all grouped back together to meet our guide. Our guide was a very petite man who was hard to follow in crowds. He took us on a tour of Doges Palace, or Palazzo Ducale. This fantasia of pink-and-white marble is a majestic expression of the prosperity and power attained by Venice during its Renaissance period. After we left the Doges Palace, our guide finished off our tour by taking us to the Basilica di San Marco. When we entered the church, it looked like every other church we had seen this entire trip, but if we looked more closely at the walls we saw that every inch of wall space was covered in a fresco. We quickly left the church to get some gelato and water to cool us down from the hot day. After our quick snack, we decided that riding in a water taxi would be a lot cheaper than riding in a gondola. The water taxi was everybody’s favorite part of Venice. The water taxi took us out on the water and let us view all of the gorgeous buildings of Venice. We came back to the hotel looking forward to more bonding time and a long night of packing. We all said our final goodbyes to J2A and Italy. We were once pilgrims on a journey and now we are followers of God.

By Bronte Taylor