Hello! Welcome to my cliched and probably annoying third-year-abroad-in-Venice blog! We actually arrived here Saturday evening and it’s currently 2.23am on Tuesday so I have a bit of back-tracking to do. I made it to my friend Cat's on Friday evening after a 4 and a half hour megabus journey down to London so that we could fly together. Sounds pretty grim but I've never really minded long public transport journeys and for £9 I wasn’t too fussed! The most stressful part of the journey was getting through Victoria train station with 26kg suitcases, hand luggage bags with laptops on our shoulders and no f*cking escalators or lifts - nightmare. We must have looked like we were about to cry because we were both helped by lovely passerby’s which apparently is very rare in Victoria and London in general. The initially very scary task of navigating an airport by ourselves and arriving on the right continent and ya’ know in one piece was actually really simple in practice. We were done with security by 4 and had time for a really nice lunch and some serious lusting after all the warmer autumn/winter clothes (none of which we had room in our suitcases to bring) in Zara (yes, Gatwick airport has a Zara ). It's actually a good job we were able to check in early because we were both over our baggage allowance and whilst one of us managed to craftily cram more stuff into their hand luggage whilst spread across the airport floor, let's just say the other's was a bit of a lost cause, (I regret nothing). The 2 hour flight was lovely and we actually arrived a little ahead of schedule. We then grabbed an ATVO bus ticket to take us straight from San Marco airport to Piazzale Roma bus station on the island for €6 - really quick and easy. We then got straight onto a vaporetto (water-bus) from there to Rialto where we met Hannah (our other course friend from Leeds) and her grandparents who are renting an apartment here for a week and then going on to Florence to finish off their holiday. And that's where we've been staying for the past few days. I'm not gonna lie, it's actually really nice to have adults here. I'm not sure why as we're still doing everything ourselves but it all just feels a little less precarious.

The first full day we were here was Sunday so we couldn’t do much in the way of organising viewings plus the University was closed so we had to wait to visit the housing office. It actually turned out to be a godsend because I think I needed Sunday morning to sleep off the stress of travelling for almost two days straight. We set out at about 2 to randomly wander the streets and ended up in a quiet little square where I bit the bullet with my first purchase in Venice. The girls got cappuccino’s but I wasn’t feeling a coffee so opted for coke instead (shocking I know). Then by some mad stroke of luck a Dutch lady overheard us talking about the annual Regata Storica boat race and told us that we’d unintentionally found a pretty sweet viewing spot for it! Things like that keep happening and it’s weirdly unsettling. The sport has apparently been practised in the Venetian lagoon for thousands of years but is better known today for the extravagant water pageant that precedes it. 16th century-style boats with gondoliers in period costume carry actors representing the Doge (Duke), the Doge’s wife and the highest ranking Venetian officials up the Grand Canal in a brightly coloured parade. We stayed to watch some of the pageant boats pass through the canal opposite us and then thought we had better try and be at least a little productive. We decided to check out the general University area in the Dorsoduro region in search of the cheaper student bars and restaurants etc, that we’d heard so much about (they were cheaper, but not by much). It is a lovely side of the island though with the best student-y square called Campo Santa Margherita where a lot of younger people seem to drink red wine, socialize and just generally chill out; will be a definite local haunt. I’ve yet to buy a detailed map of Venice with all the street names on so after randomly following our noses and hoping to find a University building of any kind we gave up and bought the lushest sandwiches from a café with a waiter actually willing to humour my terrible attempt at Italian (although he did have to resort to English when he tried to explain where the Uni was). We were sat on the grass eating our sandwiches for a good 10 minutes until Hannah noticed ‘Ca’Foscari University’ scrawled above a door of one of the buildings opposite us! I swear we weren’t just being terribly gormless. Let’s just say their signposting system is nothing like back home where human-sized silver and green plaques reading ‘Leeds Uni Campus’ shoot up from the ground at at least 3 different entrances. Oh well. We knew we were generally in the right place so that we could come back the day after.

After that I think we just went back to the apartment and chilled until about 9 until we thought we should probably get some food, (it seems being technically homeless in a foreign country sort of spoils your appetite). I know it will be fine but it’s impossible to ignore the apparent difficulty of finding a three-bedroomed place in Venice. For dinner I opted for a salad with olives as the obsession is ever-growing and red wine; saving the pizza and limoncello until it all starts to feel a little less surreal.

Will update more later. Ciao x

Café in the Castello region.

Glimpse of the Regata Storica water pageant.

Campo Santa Margherita, Dorsoduro.