Eight Weeks in Italy: Venice, for Real This Time

I am actually awake now, so I can post the rest!

I got off the train in Venice and went out to the bus station to get to the hotel. I try to walk most places usually, but the only map I had of Venice lacked street names, and unlike most Italian cities, in Venice there are no large main roads to work from. Just a few bigger small roads and some small Piazzas, except for the Piazza of San Marco, and I knew if I came to that I had in the wrong direction. So I took the bus. But this was not just a bus: there are no cars that I saw in Venice. It was a boat. The taxis are also boats, and the water buses, taxis, and gondolas all move about in the canal at the same time in all random directions. I don't know if there was any order to it, but I didn't see any of them run into each other.

As I said, there are no main roads in Venice, so when the bus pulled into the dock that was my stop I found myself on a small piazza with two tiny streets leading off of it. In the States, these would have been considered sketchy alleyways: about five feet wide and running between very old buildings. In Venice, this is normal. After wandering down a few of them I found my hotel on a slightly wider street.

Victoria, a friend from school who was studying for the last month in London, had already arrived, and I found her already at the hotel. The airline lost her luggage. In fact, her luggage is still making its way to Siena. I dropped my things and we headed out to learn our way around as best we could in the labyrinth that is Venice.

It really is an unreal city. Every few roads you cross a tiny bridge over a canal. There are often boats tied up outside doors that open directly onto the canals. The buildings are colorful even if they are close together, so the city feels tight but not dark. On some roads there are hundreds of people, and on other roads, no one. We found a place on a small street to eat dinner, where the waiter told us that the tables with the young ladies were always his tables and not to listen if the woman working there came to help us. Then we went in search of Victoria's first gelato in Italy in a very long time and got lost again making out way back to the hotel.

The next day was long, but filled with amazing things! We found breakfast at a place off the path tourists usually stay on, and had caffè latte and brioches at the counter, then went to the Piazza di San Marco to decide what to see. This is the biggest square in Venice. It may be bigger than Piazza del Campo, and hosts both the Basilica di San Marco and the Palazzo Ducale. We went in both! The basilica is beautiful- I personally like the Duomo in Siena better, but the entirety of the ceiling and much of the walls of this basilica were covered in mosaics, beautiful mosaics with a gold background and pictures form the life of Saint Mark. The entire room sparkled. And we were able to go on the roof and the top level, which has the museum of older works which used to be displayed in the basilica. I was able to look at the mosaics and tell by the style which was older and which were newer! My art history class is paying off!

Then we went into the Palazzo Ducale, where the Duke of Venice was made to live for the rest of his life with only limited chances to leave. It was a beautiful building, at least! All of the walls and ceilings were richly decorated with Renaissance era paintings. In one room, the paintings were copies of the originals because Napoleon decided to take the originals right off the ceiling!

There was one large beautiful room that was especially magnificent, right out of a ball room scene in a fairy tale. I am a little whimsical...I really wanted there to be no one else in the room so that I could dance around like this:

The room had this feel. It just wasn't as tall. And it didn't have the big staircase.

Of course, go down a few flights of stairs and around a corner, and you find yourself in the prison.

I am maybe very happy I did not live in that time period.

Really though, Venice was an amazing city. Every part of it. We ate dinner after all of our touring at a restaurant on the water front and watched more boats going by.

The Rialto Bridge across the Grand Canal