VENEZIA!! The City of Water

Saturday, we finally took our big trip to Venice!  I've been looking forward to going for a long time and was so excited and amazed that the middle of March has finally arrived..  And for all of you that have been blissfully oblivious like me for so many years - Venice is really a series of islands..Really..not even attached to Italy.  Amazing how I never knew that..

We left Really Early (7AM) Saturday morning to catch the train from Firenze Statuto station by my house (for the first time - it's kind of useless to live by a station that trains never use).  From there we changed in Prato and then a quick change in Bologna to our Venezia train.  So around 12 we arrived!  We met Christina at the station and proceeded to check in to our nice little hotel, eat a really expensive and not very good lunch and plan our day.  The weather was cold, but really nice!  Finallly a day without rain!  Everyone at work has been going stir crazy with the snow and the freezing cold and the 35 rainy days out of the last 40 before this weekend.  I think I was good up to about day 30 and then I started losing it..but anyways..

Jeremy, me, Christina and Meaghan

We made a grand tour of the city and saw as many sights as we could but left still more things to see for next time (a great excuse to come back someday!)

The canals were, of course, amazing!  There are little ones everywhere and we kept ending up on streets that dead-ended in water.  We weren't quite brave enough to try swimming, though..so you just have to wander until you find a bridge(or possibly look at map - maybe that would have been easier).  The first day we took the scenic walk from the station to San Marco..through the old gheto and stopping at every church on the way..    

The top one was my favorite..The pillars really made it look like heaven is right there within reaching distance.

The famous Piazza San Marco...

It wasn't my favorite place in Venice but it was nice. The basilica was beautiful and the Doge's Palace was amazing, the pigeons were awesome, we had 10 euro tea and gelato at the Caffe` Florian, and the clock tower was really cool (there are two huge bronze men that ring the clock tower bell with their hammers, amazingly constucted in 1499).

The next day we spent a lot of time on the ferries, travelling all around the islands.  It was a hazy day but still nice.  We learned that what looks like a short 30 minute ride around the main island really takes 3 hours when you make a lot of stops and circle around Murano.  But we circled around the entire island and got to go down the Grand Canal a couple of times as well.  It's still amazing how all of those buildings just come straight up out of the water - what they are built on you never get to see...and amazing to think that it's really wood that has been around for hundreds of years. 

We spent a lot of time wandering the streets, window shopping, eating gelato and just enjoying the city and the people.  The buildings were architecturally stunning, and some of them very ornate.  We made it to the Ca' Rezzonico, now an 18th centrury museum, and even more churches. 

Venice was beautiful and a very unique city - and definitely lived up to all of the high recommendations!  I most definitely will have to go back some day..