Venice - Canals, Gondolas, & Gelato

After a long and not very restful night train, we arrived to a sunny and warm Venice. We walked out of the train station to the Grand Canal and in front of us was a boating dock for Venice's metro system. Hannah instantly fell in love. Perfect weather, city on the water, and no traffic! Since no cars are allowed in Venice and Venice is an island, all means of transportation are either on foot or by boat. That means the metro, police, fire department, etc. are all boats.

We took a slow boat "cruise" down the canal. It was amazing how many boats and gondolas were on the water and not bumping into one another. We were in awe of how similar Venice looked in person as it does in the movies. The highlight of the ride was going under the Rialto Bridge. After checking in and resting for a little while, we went out for lunch. One quick thing about our hotel room...our window was on a canal so we could watch gondolas go by and hear the singers/musicians on them! It was really cool. Anyway, for lunch we stopped at this little snack bar type place. We didn't have very high expectations but it was quick and easy. We both got pizza and it was amazing!! Wow!

For the rest of the day, we did some sightseeing. We walked over the Rialto Bridge, went to San Zaccaria Church (where the corpse of Zachariah lays, the father of John the Baptist), walked around San Marco square and saw the clock tower that has been ringing since 1499. We also had a delicious glass of Italian wine and beer, as well as a fabulous first dinner in Italy! We had tortellini with cream and ham and gnocchi and it was amazing!


Our second day in Venice we only had a few things we really wanted to do. So we took the day slow and relaxed a bit. We toured St. Mark's Basilica, which was built in the 11th century. It has 4,750 square yards of Byzantine mosaics which are all put together to make a masterpiece of a ceiling. I (Nick) was also lucky enough to get an appointment with Benito at Coiffeur Benito, one of the best barbers in Venice. He went to town on my hair and at the end, I was very happy with the haircut. The only direction that I was able to communicate to him was "short, but not too short." It worked out great and was a lot of fun!

That afternoon we sat on a pier by a canal and played cards for a while. It was so cool being that close to a canal and just hanging out. To make the time even better, I actually beat Hannah! I thought everyone would be proud of me for that :) Since I beat Hannah, I had to buy us gelato...actually alato gelato (Hannah doesn't think it's a very funny joke, but I do!) It was very tasty!

That night for dinner we went to a more "touristy" restaurant. They thought it was acceptable to charge us to pay them to eat. They called it a cover charge or table tax, but we called it bologna! The food wasn't as good as the first night, but it was still pretty good...because it is Italy!

We read about this thing called dueling orchestras in St. Mark's square so after dinner we went to see what they were all about. What happens is three restaurants serve customers on the square and they each hire an orchestra. The restaurants then charge a crazy amount of money (like $20 for a cup of coffee!) for drinks. The orchestras play for hours and don't pay much attention to one another. Instead of sitting down, we just wandered between the three restaurants, watching the orchestras from the back behind the customers sitting down at the restaurants. We thought we had the better deal because not only could we wander, but we could dance also with other people on the square! We had a really fun time!

After a long and stressful travel day, and having to improvise because we missed a very important train, we made it to Riomaggiore! Below is a picture of our view when we got off the train. We are having a great time and taking lots of pictures! We love you and miss you all! Less than a month until we are back in the states!