Ahh Venice! You’ve all seen the pictures of quaint streets and canals with gondolas cruising quietly by. What more can we add?… everything you might imagine about Venice is true. What a unique and gorgeous city, with not a car, scooter or bicycle in sight. Everywhere you need to go, you can get to on foot or boat. Venice covers only 4 square kilometres but consists of about 120 islands, (just as many churches) and over 500 bridges. Without a straight street anywhere, walking through the labyrinth initially guaranteed getting lost, but eventually we realised that, in such a small place, all we really needed to do is keep walking until we stumbled across a major tourist area or sign, and then use it as our reference to find the way home.
Although our time here seemed too short, we certainly left with a lot of memories; some of the highlights include:
-Taking oh so many pictures of quaint bridges and canals.
-Drinking Chianti beside the canal at our apartment, and serenading American tourists as they gondola past. (A version of Mambo Italiano was especially appreciated by the gondolier)
-Walking to St Marks Square in the evening, being amazed at the basilica and then listening to a fantastic band play at a café in the square, (it was worth paying $10 per drink).
-Spending a euro for a bag of corn and getting swarmed by birds to re-live my favourite Hitchcock scene.
-Walking, walking, and yet more walking to soak up the atmosphere.
-And of course, paying an outrageous amount for a gondola ride, and loving every minute of it (thankfully no serenade).
This is a place we need to come back to!
If you want to see more photos click here: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=14084&l=b9f3f&id=700132588
Here are some videos of one of our "wine soaked" evenings.