Wednesday, October 26, 2011

Italy Part 7

This is the end.  These pictures document our last three days in Italy.  We had the pleasure of staying in Venice for the last part of our trip.  Venice is a different world, a water world!  I swear I saw the mariner chugging along the waters of Venice.  They are no cars, only boats.  It seemed like everyone owned a boat.  The boats are the cars.  It's wild.  They drive the boats the same as you would drive a car.  We got there in the early afternoon and ate lunch.  We got ourselves squared away and ventured out to see what Venice had to offer.  The walk turned out to be longer than we expected.  Everyone says you should get lost in Venice.  What they don't tell you is you will get lost in Venice.  You "should" get lost in Venice.  I read between the lines, well played.  One wrong turn will have you searching for a familiar sight for hours.  You'll think you're going the right direction only to take a turn and find nothing but water.  Stresso!















  We walked and walked and walked.  We kept walking until we found the Piazza San Marco.  This is the location of the Doge's Palace and Saint Mark's Basilica.  This is also the hub for gondola activity.  If you wanted a gondola ride you're guaranteed to find one here.  You would also find legions of pigeons, everywhere.





 We managed to find our way back to the hotel, and drag ourselves out to dinner.  We took a quick night time walk.  The night hides a lot of Venice's blemishes. 




The second day found us walking back to Piazza San Marco.  We managed to get there much quicker and easier the second day.  We had a tour to meet up with, but we were a little early so we walked around and I took some more pictures.  We had a Ron Perlman sighting and also met a fearless pigeon.





  After our tour we hopped on a boat and went to the Glass factory on Murano.  We saw the shop master make a vase and a horse faster than it wakes me to put my shoes on.  It was very fascinating.  After the demonstration, we were able to buy items if we wanted to.  Their fancy glass is not cheap.  I saw a couple of pieces that were over 40 grand.




We got back on the boat and headed back to Venice.  I was messing around with my camera a bit and took pictures of random things on the boat.  There is also a couple of pictures of interesting things along the way.




The next set of pictures show a little bit of what the waterways are like with traffic.  I am amazed I did not see one accident the whole time we were there.




Gondola!

The final night we took a casual walk around Venice.  The last night there was bitter sweet.  Italy was fantastic, but I couldn't wait to get back to Boston.  These are it, the last Italy photos.  Photo wise I think I took some good pictures.  I think I handled myself pretty well.  Obviously not every picture came out decent, a bunch were pretty poor.  I'm sure I posted some that were awful, but I thought were good.  From what everyone says to me, the pictures are great.  I'm not sure if you guys are scared to bring me down a notch or two.  If you are I implore you to critique me so I can get better.








Ciao Bella.