City of Canals

Our third and final city in Italy was Venice, home of gondolas, narrow streets, and a slow sinking feeling. Gradual decent into the sea aside, Venezia is an incredibly beautiful, old city that felt very different from Rome and Florence, most likely because of the lack of cars in the city. Some streets are no bigger then alleys and the only way to get around other than walking is by boat. Venice still has public transportation in the city but only water busses. Not having to dodge traffic was a nice change of pace.

Night 1

We arrived to our campsite early in the afternoon and instead of hanging out in the heat we went into Venice for the evening. Without much of a plan we wandered the streets for a while, occasionally running into where the street dead ends into a canal, and eventually found a place for dinner. We continued the trend of only eating pasta or pizza and continued to explore. I want you to imagine a picture of Venice. That's what every bridge over one of the canals looks like. The city is so picturesque that every canal has a photo spot. It was difficult at times to walk over bridges because there were so many people taking selfies, but we aren't without blame.

Day 1 - Making Friends with Pigeons

We started our first full day by heading to St. Mark's Square. The square is home to St. Mark's Cathedral and the Doge's Palace. It is also home to some very eager and friendly pigeons. Even without any actual food in hand we managed to get some to hop up and be our friends. Maureen had a pigeon land on her head! I think it was the dress; they wanted to be friends with the other birds.

Bird Queen

There are three large flagpoles in front of the cathedral which were flying the EU flag, the Italian flag, and the Venice flag. We walked though St. Mark's another day when they weren't flying the flags so they must only have them out for special occasions like Republic Day, 2 June.

St Mark's Cathedral

We made our way down the street to a park that had some art on display. We attempted to take a water bus to the Rialto bridge but I underestimated how sick the boat would make me so we got off after a few stops and walked the rest of the way. Venice isn't a large city but you can easily walk for miles in the narrow, complicated streets. Before dinner (pasta again!) we explored the Leonardo da Vinci museum which had interactive models of some of Leonardo's inventions.

Day 2 - Beach Day!

We took a break from the main part of Venice on our second day and trekked out to Lido, one of the outer islands. We took the water bus from Venice (I prepared this time with some motion sickness medicine) and headed for the beach. Lido has a long stretch of beach and a nice, more modern town. We took a break from pasta and pizza and got some amazing Indian food for dinner before heading back to the campsite.

Day 3 - Murano

Our final full day in Venice was spent on the island of Murano just north of Venice proper. Much like Venice there are no cars and canals running through the city but it is much smaller and has a lot less people walking the streets. Murano is known for their glass making and there were shops selling glass art, jewelry, and home goods all over the place. We considered purchasing something with the offer of free shipping wherever we wanted but it was a little costly for us.

While we were on Murano we saw a massive regatta running through the main canal. There were boats of all shapes and sizes with people from all over rowing them. The race went all throughout Venice and took us by surprise with how many boats there were.

 

After exploring Murano we took the water bus back to Venice for one last walk through the city before heading to the campsite. We met some other Americans at dinner at our campsite and taught them Euchre and Love Letter to wrap up the night.

It has been a great week in Italy. We've been in one country for so long it's going to be a challenge to switch languages. We were just getting good at Italian! I'll definitely want to visit Italy again; there's so much to see and do that a week only scratched the surface. For now, on to Prague!

One last thing: be sure to check out our photos from the trip! If you go to the menu of the blog and check out the Photos section you can see all of the pictures we have been taking and not just the ones that made the blog!