Venice by Night

Before dinner we had gone back to the hostel to check in and put out stuff in the room we were staying in. We talked to the kinda odd hostel worker again (who was sleeping on the couch when we returned) and he showed us the four bed female dorm that we had booked. He took us into the big girls’ room and then went to the wall where there was a padlocked door. He unlocked the padlock and we walked into a glorified closet that was supposed to be our room. We paid twenty-seven euro for this?

He left us there to unpack and make our beds and the three of us talked about how weird this was and a possible escape route (jumping out the window into the canal) should he use the padlock to lock us in the room (Stacy did ask him if the padlock would be on and he laughed saying that he would not lock us in while we were sleeping, which was only a little reassurance).

We went to dinner, which was probably the worst food that we had while being in Italy, and then tried to think of ways to avoid going back to the somewhat dirty and shady hostel. We strolled the streets of Venice for a while but it looked like things were shutting down and we were forced to go back to A Venice Fish.

When we got there we went into our little padlocked closet, which we were sharing with two other girls despite the fact that we thought we booked a four bed dorm, and tried to find the light switch but there was none to be found. Actually, we couldn’t even find a light that the switch would turn on. This was not looking good. While nervously laughing (I’m sure you’ve witnessed my nervous/scared/uncomfortable laugh before) I declared that there was no way that I was paying twenty-seven euro to sleep in a closet that didn’t even have a light and stormed off to find the rodent-like hostel worker (he had both a rat-tail and beady eyes, earning him this distinction).

I found him in the kitchen cooking for the hostel wearing a David apron. David aprons are aprons that have the front of Michangelo’s David  on them in an attempt to make the wearer look like he has David’s body. As we were walking down the streets of Florence and Rome we kept thinking to ourselves “Who would wear that tacky thing?” Now I know.

I asked him where the light for the room was and he showed me. We went back to the dorm room where Stacy and Britt were waiting and he went to the corner, pressing a switch with his foot that turned on a “floor lamp.” This “floor lamp” consisted of a broomstick with too light bulbs duct taped to it.

More nervous laughing occurred and we tried to pack for our flight back to Dublin. Brittany and I went into the common room of the hostel because we thought that more people we make the whole experience a little less scary. We met a nice boy from Canada who we talked to a little and I called my Dad to regale him with tales of me singing in a gondola, which he enjoyed.

Brittany went to bed but I stayed in the lobby so that I could use the internet. I continued to write in my journal and the rat-tailed hostel worker came up to me and asked what I was writing. I was tempted to say I was writing about him and his sexy apron but he seemed like the unpredictable type and I didn’t know how he would react. He also tried to get the other guests in the hostel to go out with him after his shift, which everyone declined. I did however meet a girl from none other than the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign! She said that I looked familiar but since she is in Psych I doubt that we had ever met before.

We survived the night but none of us slept particularly well. At one point in the night a dog started to continuously bark, which lead to a lot of screaming in Italian. A boat also came by blaring rap music, another indication that I might not be in quiet, picturesque Venice at all, just an Italian neighborhood in Queens (although I’m sure in New York cars bust out music, not boats).