Venice/Pordenone
by Bridget Denson-Dorman and Mary Slinger

After the 5 o’clock morning wake up call by Mr. & Mrs. Mosquito, room 305 was not ready for the 9 am. departure time, especially after a lot of belongings had been left in previous hotels, we cleaned the room up and down, making it just in time for the bus. 
The drive this morning was nice and short.  Even with all of the anticipation and beautiful scenery outside of the windows we all managed to fall back asleep. We arrived in Venice at 1 p.m.. The whole team took the public boat bus along the Grand Canal to San Marcos Plaza.  There pigeons that we fed with pieces of corn bombarded us! We then decided to split into different groups.  Everyone did a little bit of shopping, a little bit of eating, and a little bit of getting lost… One of the groups made friends with some handsome gentlemen from Portugal.  He accompanied the girls quite a ways across the renowned Rialto Bridge to meet the rest at La Plaza Roma.  After five hours of walking around, lots of the girls came back with some cool stuff.  We then all loaded back on our bus, and headed towards Pordonone.  After finally arriving, we went to the “cafeteria” to eat our first meal with the tournament.  It was interesting on how much attention we received from all of the other teams there.  It was a long, tiring, and exciting day, so once we arrived back at the hotel we all pretty much crashed into bed!