Venice

Visiting Venice was a lovely one and a half day stop the way to Hungary. Venice is a beautiful city built on 117 small islands, composed of 150 canals, and 200 alleys. It could be the perfect romantic getaway...provided you visit Venice with someone to be romantic with. However, waking up in a bottom bunk bed in a hostel dorm room, having a cold shower and a so called coffee and croissant "breakfast" was not the way I prefered to wake up in Venice. But, once we hopped on the vaparetto and found two outdoor seats, the best way to view Venice's famous Grand Canal (without dropping a Ben Franklin on a personal gondola ride), my energy was restored.

We gave ourselves a self-tour from our guidebook and enjoyed the charming buildings and fancy architecture. Then we visited the main sights...the Rialto Bridge, Basillica San Marco and Doge's Palace, the Galleria dell' Academia, and even wandered around Carnnaregio, the Jewish Ghetto, the college campus area, Santa Margherita.

I loved wandering around the small streets, crossing canals over bridges, window shopping for Venetian masks, and our afternoon gelatto breaks. There's nothing like true Italian gelatto! We also had some relaxing canal-side meals, eating pizza, pasta, and wine. We made friends with our waiter, who boats home each night after work, who offered us free Limoncello shots. Saluté!



The morning before sorting out a way to get to the airport amongst the surprising vaparetto strike, had only one more sight left to see on our list: St. Mark's Basicilla. We'd strolled by once, but forgot to take a peek inside because we'd found too many cool streets nearby. Though we were lucky to escape the morning rain showers, we did not escape the resulting flood in St. Mark's Square! We, determined to go inside, removed our shoes, rolled up our pants, and waded across St. Mark's square in ankle deep water! I enjoyed the humor of the situation and am proud that we are probably one of few tourists to have a photo like this: