Saturday, July 17, 2010

Venice

July 12th

Arriving in Venice is no small feat…considering it is a island city that uses only boats for transportation. So our water taxi arrived in Venice this morning, and we immediately met up with a local tour guide for a walking tour of the city. This city is amazing. It’s comprised of hundreds (thousands?) of tiny “roads” (alleys?) that are intertwined and TG informed us on the way over that most of us would probably be lost at some point today. I can see how that would be possible…however I tend to stick with my very own personal GPS (aka Jenny Willey begin_of_the_skype_highlighting     end_of_the_skype_highlighting) so we never get lost. Knock on wood. So the walking tour was interesting to say the least…our guide was a 4 ft. feisty Italian woman who was constantly calling our group out for sitting down at every opportunity. So after the walking tour we went and watched a glass blowing demonstration, which was amazing. These Venetians can create a glass vase from nothing in about 30.43 seconds. He also made a horse for us to see…and I literally saw Jenny’s eyes light up. I knew then that we would be on a mission for a glass horse. So we were given free time for a couple of hours in which Jenny and I did a little Venetian shopping (surprise!) Jenny found her horse, but sadly all of the vases I loved were 500 euro. Surprise surprise. So needless to say I left empty handed.

We had a gondola ride booked for noon, and of course our gondolier (sp?) looked like a Venetian Fabio. This was the highlight of the city for me. We floated our way around the city’s canals…thinking of how different it would be like to drive a boat around town instead of a car. After the ride, we strolled around Venice, going to the Doge’s palace, which was interesting. Pretty much the equivalent to the White House for us American folk. We got to walk across the Bridge of Sighs, a bridge in the lower level of the palace where the prisoners would walk across and see Venice for the last time before being locked away forever. We made our way over to the Rialta bridge, and looked around in St. Mark’s church, where the gospel writer is buried.

Once back in Lido, a group of us went out for a traditional late Italian meal at a restaurant called Hemingways. We overheard blues music coming from down the street, so we stopped and listened to “Sweet Home Chicago” (our group’s request) and before we knew it there was a group of people standing around in the street listening as well. Random fun times in Lido!

Venice didn’t disappoint! Headed to Munich tomorrow…ciao!

Lauren and Jenny—aka Venetian gondoliers