After our soccer game in Milan, we drove to Venice. We ended up staying in the hotel that Uncle Mark and Aunt Elaine recommended to us. Honestly, it was the best hotel we stayed in the entire trip! They told us to stay on the mainland (which I totally recommend as well). Everything is a lot newer there, and a lot more affordable. On the island of Venice, all of the buildings are really old, and honestly smells a little funny (lots of stagnant water)! The hotel we stayed in was awesome, it was brand new, and everything was really contemporary and clean. They even had carpet (a rarity in Europe). It was actually a Best Western chain, called Quid (kind of weird, I know.) It was the only hotel we stayed in that had a normal shower, carpet, fast WiFi, and a continental breakfast.
Thank you Aunt Elaine and Uncle Mark!
God bless American chain hotels.
I was so excited to see carpet, I'm pretty sure I knelt down and kissed it when we walked in!
The main way of getting around Venice is by foot. It is not a large city, and it is quite possible to walk from one end to the other in an hour. In fact, one of the many joys of visiting Venice is simply walking through its traffic-free streets and alleyways, catching sight of the canals as you cross the characteristic Venetian bridges. But, a faster way to see everything is by water bus, the name says it all. It's just like a bus, in the sense it makes frequent stops, and passengers can get on and off as they please. It's a lot more affordable than the water taxis, similar to the cost difference between street taxis and buses on the road. So, we got an unlimited all day pass for the water bus, and we were off!
Venice is located in northeastern Italy, comprised of a group of 118 small islands separated by canals and linked by bridges. It is located in the marshy Venetian Lagoon which stretches along the shoreline, between the mouths of the Po and the Piave Rivers.
Venice is often reffered to as "the floating city"...which you can see why. The buildings of Venice are constructed on closely spaced wooden piles.
Most of these piles are still intact after centuries of submersion. The
foundations rest on the piles, and buildings of brick or stone sit above these footings. Sean thought it looked more like the sinking city...
Aunt Elaine and Uncle Mark told us about this great pizza place that they loved while they were in Venice. We were starving as soon as we got off the water bus, so we headed straight to "Antico Forno". Of course it was delicious, just look at it! I'm pretty sure all of the Italian food we ate in Italy was amazing. Another stellar recommendation from Aunt Elaine and Uncle Mark.
On our way to see some of the sites, we saw this cute little Italian man singing in the streets. It was awesome! He was definitely one of the best singers I've seen on a street corner. I included a video showing part of his performance.
Next stop: Piazza San Marco! Or as we Americans like to say...St. Mark's Square. Piazza San Marco is public square of Venice, where it is generally known just as "the Piazza"
The Piazza is dominated at its eastern end by the great church of St. Mark. As you can see in the picture, it was under some reconstruction, but it was still breathtaking.
The Piazza is just how it looks in all the pictures, books, and movies. There are people everywhere, pigeons galore, and it is one of the best place to people watch!
Yes, this Asian chick was taking her wedding pictures in the middle of The Piazza...
First, we went up into St Mark's Campanile, also known as the bell tower of the basilica. The tower is capped by a pyramidal spire, at the top of which sits a golden weathervane in the form of the archangel Gabriel. Our tour guide told us that each of the five bells of the campanile had a special purpose. The Renghiera (or the Maleficio) announced executions; the Mezza Terza proclaimed a session of the Senate; the Nona sounded midday; the Trottiera called the members of the Maggior Consiglio to council meetings and the Marangona, the biggest, rang to mark the beginning and ending of working day.
The views from the top of the bell tower were to die for!
This picture is a good depiction of the structure of St. Mark's Square.
It was just a little windy up on the top!
One of the five bells up on St Mark's Campanile.
These pictures give a great view of some of the 118 islands that Venice is comprised of.
St. Mark's Basilica.
This is the cathedral church of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Venice, northern Italy.
One of it's most impressive features that our tour guide pointed out to us is its opulent design, gilded Bryzantine mosiacs. I was shocked to learn that the entire ceiling was made from golden mosiac tile! It was a status symbol of Venetian wealth and power, from the 11th century on the building has been known by the nickname Chiesa d'Oro (Church of gold).
Simply amazing.
These were some pictures taken outside the basilica on the upper balcony. We already had to pay to get into the church (lame), and then they made us pay even more to go out onto the balcony. I wasn't happy about it to say the least, but who knows if we'll ever be there again! When in Venice...
This is one of my favorite pictures from Venice. It gives a great view of St. Mark's Square.
We thought we would give gelato another try while we were in Venice, and I'm so glad we did. It was much better than the gelato we had in Rome. Maybe we just went to a marginal gelato stop in Rome, because it was not good at all there. Sean and I both agreed that we still think gelato in general is a little overrated...
Finally, the moment I had been waiting for! Our Gondola ride!!!
Everyone we had talked to and all of the reviews we had read prior to our trip had said how ridiculously overpriced the Gondola rides were (and they were), but I didn't care. We were going to Venice, Italy and we were riding through the canals, and we were going to make out!
...and it was awesome!
I was a little disappointed when our Gondolier took off his hat, but we were still loving the ride! It honestly felt so surreal...we were in a gondola, in Venice, just cruising through the little canals. I think Sean put it well, "this doesn't suck."
My favorite parts were going through the small canals. It was crazy the way they could maneuver the gondolas, I was impressed! That's the way I had always envisioned Venice in my mind. We found out that the gondoliers don't really sing to their customers (I guess it can't ALL be like the movies), so Sean put on some music from his iPhone, and in no time we were listening to every sappy love song out there. I loved every minute of it.
Riding underneath the Bridge of Sighs.
This picture is from when our gondolier took us back into the Grand Canal. It forms one of the major water-traffic corridors in the city. At one end, the canal leads into the lagoon near the Santa Lucia railway station and the other end leads into Saint Mark Basin; in between, it makes a large reverse-S shape through the central districts of Venice.
This is one of the more famous bridges in Venice, called the Rialto Bridge (Ponte di Rialto). It is one of the four bridges extending through the Grand Canal. It is the oldest bridge across the canal, and was the dividing line for the districts of San Marco and San Polo.
Getting some last sightseeing in before dinner.
This is the Sana Maria della Salute Roman Catholic Church. There are churches everywhere in Venice! I thought this one was gorgeous, and wanted to capture some of it's beauty!
This Roman Catholic church is more commonly referred to as Salute. It stands on a narrow finger of land between the Grand Canal and the Bacino di San Marco making the church visible when entering the Piazza San Marco from the water.
At this point, we were both starting to feel pretty tired, and needed a break. Our next adventure was to find a delicious Italian restaurant. We worked up quite an appetite after walking around all day.
Amidst our dinner expedition, we heard the most beautiful singing outside one of the churches we passed. It was a children's choir performance, and it was absolutly beautiful. We took a few minutes break, and got a little soul food and rested our feet. I wish that I remembered the name of the church. It was so nice to hear, reminded us both of home.
Dinner SUCCESS! Sean's favorite thing to do is be spontaneous, not have plans, dinner reservations, or any type of schedule. I do NOT do well without structure, I am WAY too Type-A for that kind of lifestyle. But, I promised him we could "find a random/great restaurant" in Venice for dinner (I thought we were going to be eating out of a food truck), but it worked out perfectly. It was definitely the best food we had since Greece. God bless Trip Advisor! We downloaded the Wi-Fi free City Guides version the night before at our (amazing) hotel, and it led us straight to a top rated restaurant within close proximity to us. I honestly couldn't have planned it out better!
Night time in Venice, beautiful! It was gorgeous seeing the canals all lit up in the evening. I wished we could have stayed out there all night.
On our last water bus ride. Do I look thrashed or what?! We were really starting to feel exhausted. There were so many people on the water buses at night, I think we were all trying to get to buses to take us back to the mainland. Speaking of...
This is one of the funniest memories from our trip (well, funny now). We weren't exactly sure which stops we had to get off/on to transfer buses to get back to our hotel. Everything was in Italian, so we were just basically asking anyone who spoke English how to get to our destination. On our bus right before the transfer, we realized at the last second, that we had to get off at this stop. They were starting to close the doors, and Sean ran off (thinking the bus doors are like most automatic doors, meaning they'll open upon contact), wrong...the door closed after Sean bolted through them. He was standing outside...somewhere in Venice...and I was still trapped inside the bus. And, THIS is the face that he was making! All the passengers saw what had just happened, and LUCKILY everyone on the bus started yelling stop in Italian (god bless them). "Smettere! Smettere!" I will never forget those words! You could both see the terror in our faces. At the time it was completely terrifying, thinking about being separated in a foreign country, without the use of our phones, speaking the language, etc. But a few seconds (after I got off the bus and realizing everything was fine) later I started laughing hysterically at the face Sean made. I couldn't get over how funny it was. Obviously, it would have been fine..I knew the name of the hotel, and I would have made my way back somehow...but for a split second it was a little scary. Sean kept saying in defense to his outrageous face, "That's how you get taken, Becky." Or something like, "Oh, you never would have been able to find your way back." "You know girls are terrible at directions." PALEEEEEZ. I'm a perfectly capable adult, and I would have been just fine. Fortunately, we all had a good laugh about it afterwards.
This is how our night ended, all bundled up in our Best Western. :)
We LOVED Venice! I would totally recommend it to anyone who wants to go there. Everyone kept telling us that we were smart for coming there before summer (we weren't really smart, that's just how our anniversary fell). I guess because of the heat and humidity, the water smells even worse, and it's not as enjoyable. So if you're planning a trip to Venice, don't go in the summer apparently! Everything was wonderful, the people, the food, the history...we loved it.
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