italee: Venice

Was beautiful. I fell in love with the water and the serenity of the place. There was no mopeds or cars whizzing by, therefore was much quieter than Florence. I would go back there in a heart beat. Luckily we had nice, though cold weather most the time. Sunday was pretty miserable but luckily we were either inside/leaving that day. I can see where it wouldn't be that great of place if the weather was bad. With the good weather though, in my opinion it was one of the prettiest places on earth.

We got there on Friday, threw our stuff in our rooms and then went right on to our first musuem visit of the San Marco. What blew me away was the fact that the whole place inside was a mosaic! It had to take forever for them to do it. We were able to go out on the top floor and go outside on the balcony. It was a great view of the whole Palazzo. From there we went to Palazzo Ducale which had a too much history for me to remember ;) But what I do remember was the prison that we walked through. There was a door connecting the 'court room' which lead right to the prison and execution room. The corridor between the rooms had a window over the water/city so the prisoners could take one last look at the world before they were killed or put away. The doors to the cells were maybe 4 ft tall, I don't know if they were all little guys back then or if that was just something they figured prisoners didn't need. It was really interesting but also a lot of information to take in all at once. That night a group of us went to this local place and had a great dinner, we were there right when it opened and by the time we left the wait was 45 minutes. Venice doesn't have much night life, so I was in bed nice and early that night.

The next morning we started bright and early with a visit to The Accademia Gallery, then the Scuola di San Rocco where we saw the world's largest painting and finally we went to the Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari. This was the first church we went to that didn't have any frescos. Kind of refreshing to see in a way (The humidity would have destroyed all the frescos). The church was beautiful and had some amazing sculptures and decorations, including a giant pyramid against a wall as a tomb for someone. That was all in the morning! For the afternoon we hopped on a ferry to the glass island, Murano. Once again it was beautiful ( I feel like that's the only word I use to describe Italy). We saw a glass blowing demonstration, found a quite area by the water, and window shopped/shopped until our feet fell off. I was on my feet from 8am until 5 pm with the exception for 30 minutes all day. What an incredible day! Saturday night followed a similar pattern to Fridays, except for a friend and I went to go supervise a late night activity of people jumping an a canal to make sure they didn't get hurt. The didn't but I still think they were idiots for trying. Then I finally got back to my warm bed to crash, did I mention Venice was freezing cold? It was.

Sunday we went to the Guggenheim Museum, which was Peggy's house and personal collection. She had so many famous pieces it was unreal! This lady was loaded. It was once again a breath of fresh air to see modern art, not that I don't appreciate Renaissance art, but it can appear kind of repetitive after a while. Finally paintings/art without a real rhyme or reason. This is the kind of place I could have stayed all day. Sunday it rained all day and in the morning the water was about 3 inches from flooding over the canals and the gondolas weren't running because the water was too rough. Don't worry I still got a gondola ride in (on Friday and Saturday we used them as taxis). By the time we left Sunday afternoon the water had gone down a bit. Then we arrive back around 6:40 and guess who was waiting for me…..MOM AND DAD!!!!!!