Venice
Venice looks and feels like you are walking around in a GIANT movie set. The entire thing hardly looks real. It was so much fun just watching all the boats go up and down the grand canal. The gondoliers are incredibly talented. The come within inches of each other and the walls, but hardly ever touch. We spent our first day in Venice at the museum of art, St. Mark’s square, and the Rialto bridge… all the touristy stuff. And there were definitely a lot of tourists there. I’m not sure if I could live in Venice just because of the massive amount of tourists. It’s funny how when you stay in Europe for long enough, you start to resent the ignorant tourists who don’t have a clue what’s going on, just walking around snapping pictures every few feet.
After lunch, we went for a gondola ride (mandatory) then we went back to the hotel for showers, to take a nap, and get ready for dinner. We went to a cafe in Campo Margherita which had a 3 course meal for 14 euro. You got one of several choices for each dish. It ended up being delicious. Only one problem: the wine. It was 16 euros per bottle of the house wine. Dinner ended up being a little pricey but worth it.
The girls left for Florence early Tuesday morning but my flight wasn’t until that night so I headed back into Venice and wandered. I ended up wandering through the Jewish ghetto of Venice. Which neither like a Jewish community, nor like a ghetto. In fact, the only thing I could tell different was the fact that the streets were wider and there were hardly any tourists. I wandered through here for some time and grabbed a snack of fresh strawberries from a local produce market and continued to wander back towards the grand canal. I made it to St. Mark’s square and went into the basilica (which was impressive but not overly so). Then I went back to the Rialto bridge and watched the water traffic while I walked up and down the Grand Canal for a few hours. It amazed me to just watch the city busily going up and down the canal.
I was wearing a soccer jersey from Milan and had my fo-hawk action going pretty strong so I was being mistaken for a European more often than not. I was walking around with my bags and my camera so I was obviously a tourist but I was mistaken for being French pretty much all day. French, I can see. Italian, not so much. To close out the day, I had a late lunch of gnocchi along the Grand Canal and stopped for gelato one last time on my way to the bus station.
Standing outside the bus company’s office, I ran in to two guys from Tech who were killing time in Venice. They had been there for 3 days after coming from Prague and I just ran in to them as we were all leaving town. I walked over to where I needed to catch the bus. The bus pulled up, and off walk two more guys from Tech, just arriving to Venice. What are the odds. Running in to 4 people from your same trip randomly in Venice. Anyways, I am currently uploading a LOT of pictures to flickr. And soon I will be picking out the better ones and adding them to facebook.
June 5th, 2008 at 9:09 pm
you pictures are fantastic! I now want to go back to Venice. The only down to Venice I noticed was the constant fish smell…did you notice that? Oh did you visit any other the other islands like Morano and Burano? I remember liking Morano a lot.
June 6th, 2008 at 8:02 pm
I didn’t notice the fish smell… except when I was right next to the Grand Canal. Everywhere else it was fine. We really wanted to visit an island but we never found time. What is special about the islands that you can’t see in Venice?
June 9th, 2008 at 8:54 am
You sound so proud to be mistaken for a European. It cracks me up
I sometimes got asked if I was French in Mexico, but in Europe, my flip-flops always gave me away!