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| Venice, Italy |
| Scuzi, Signor gondola driver, can we have two tickets to Venice. ..and a pizza, and a calzone, and a huge bowl of pasta, a nice bottle of Italian chianti, and oh yeah, a bottomless bowl of gelati? Venice is great! Unfortunately we could only afford two days on our way back to Marseille from Salzburg but it turned out to be well worth it. Venice is just something you have to see to believe. We basically spent the entirety of our two days wandering around feeling like we were on a movie set. There is no other way to describe it. . .it just doesn't look real. This is also yet another place where it seems virtually impossible to take a bad picture (except the one below where we both look majorly sleep deprived---accurate but not attractive). The setting is unreally beautiful, the people are friendly, and don't forget the food. It is almost worth going to Italy just for the gelati alone but if that doesn't twist your arm, we hope these pictures will give you a taste for just one of the marvelous cities Italy has to offer. |
| As previously mentioned, the picture above is not what I would necessarily classify as a keeper but it is not easy to get a picture of us both when traveling alone as a couple so you take what you can get. I also couldn't resist having my picture taken amid all those gondolas. . .I mean when else will we find that as a backdrop? |
| More canals. . . |
| And speaking of gondolas, I guess you could say that we were kind of obsessed with taking pictures of them. . .that and the amazing canals that were everywhere. We crossed a bridge practically every 200 meters and every time we felt the need to take a picture because it was so unbelievable. Besides from looking like a movie set, Venice is also an amazing labyrinth of sorts and I suppose a lot of our wanderings and these pictures are a direct result of our getting lost. But it's not like we had anywhere to go so I guess getting lost was just part of the fun |
| More gondolas. . . |
| Above and below are pictures of the famous Piazza San Marco where all the tourists commiserate. . .you can see why! Napoleon once called this site "the most beautiful drawing room in all of Europe". On the right you can see the Basilica di San Marco and the picture on the left gives you a sense of the architecture and the impressive size of the piazza. The square itself serves as an open-air museum with each of it's three wings having been built in separate centuries (over the course of the 15th and 16th centuries), each representing the respective architectural styles of their era. |
| With all that history, you can see why all these pigeons would want to live there. Apparently it is against the law to feed the pigeons which I find funny considering that you can see a guy selling pigeon food in the background of the above picture. Interesting. Is it just me or does Jeremy look like some crazy bird man with all those pigeons happily roosting on him? I think he looks like the pet detective. |
| Venice is the city in Europe which is most famous for knowing how to celebrate Carnaval (Mardi Gras) in grand style. On the left you can see a few examples of the elaborate Carnaval masks they sell on every corner. (Can anyone guess what movie these masks make me think of?. . .Too late. . .Eyes Wide Shut.) And then below you can see Jeremy and I enjoying our last meal before our train home. I do not exaggerate when I say that Jeremy's calzone was literally an entire pizza folded in half with all of the toppings squooshed inside. Yum. |
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