Ferry Boat Hell............THANKS A LOT, GRACIE.

Ok, so our trip to Venice had a little kink thrown in the plans. You see, there were 4 of us that stayed in the same hostal rooms the whole time. Well, we had 4 cities, so we each chose 1 city to cover the deposit of the hostal for the city we chose. Then when we got to the actual hostal we would pay separately for our own bed. Ok, so I chose to put the hostal in Florence on my card. Well, the hostal was really really nice with a great location. However, it seemed a little sketchy at the beginning. First of all, when we got there this little 40 something Mexican but Asian looking woman (whose name we later learned was Grace) was sort of arguing with the guy working the front desk. We stood there waiting for a good 2 minutes before we were helped. Oh, and let's not forget Grace's silent friend/side-kick who wore a winter hat indoors that had a big pot leaf on it. Yikes. RED FLAGS EVERYWHERE! Ok, so we ended up finally being helped, and we each paid for our own beds with cash. We never got a receipt, either. (Mistake that could have cost me.) Anyway, the stay was great, so we left Florence after 3 nights and continued on to Venice. I happened to check my bank account that night in Venice, however, and saw that the Florence hostal had billed my bank account for 50 euro, which was the cost of a room for the night. I was like "WHAT?! WE PAID IN CASH!" Then I remembered that we never got a receipt, so I thought they were going to try and say we never paid. I called and happened to talk to Grace (who we'll fondly call Gracie). What happened was that they mixed up my account information with a guest that never showed up. Instead of charging the no-show, they charged me. Well, you'd think there would be an easy way for them to reverse the charges. But no, no, no. Gracie seemed to think that would be impossible. Now mind you, when I called to explain the situation, Gracie went ape-shit. Not in a mad way, but in a very frazzled way. Her English was already a little shaky, and when she got anxious she was IMPOSSIBLE to understand. So, pretty much the whole time my friend, Sarah, acted like me. Gracie decided she would send the money via Western Union. Well, she ended up putting my name on the money transfer, but without my middle name that's on my passport. Long story short, we spent all afternoon trying to figure this all out. Well, we had decided to try and go to the island of Murano that day and see glass-blowing shows, which it's famous for. You had to take this big ferry boat there. That took about 30 minutes to get there, and by the time we made it the last show had already taken place. So, we hopped back on the boat to go to a different island that supposedly had a shipwreck. According to the map, it looked like it would take about 20 minutes to get there. If you ever go to Venice, remember this piece of advice: MAPS NOT DRAWN TO SCALE. It took at least 45 minutes to get there. Well, by this point we had been on the ferry for over an hour and a half. All we wanted to do was get back to our island and get the heck off this boat. So we continued on until we got back there. All in all we were on the boat for over 2 hours straight. And we saw nothing. Great. Thanks alot Gracie. (Oh, and I didn't get my money back from Gracie until I got back to Madrid. But she did feel bad. God love ya, Gracie!)

...as you can see from this post, I don't believe in paragraphs. Just one big block of text is what you get.