the trip of a lifetime - 1st stop VENICE

hmm... haven't been good with the blog updates recently... for shame, for shame. Guess I've been too busy living life to record it.

The biggest news recently - we took our fab vacation May 12 - 28. And yes, it really was a trip of a lifetime. The highlights included the pyramids in Egypt, the Acropolis/Parthenon in Greece, Istanbul, Dubrovnik (Croatia),and the ruins of Ephesus in Turkey, amongst many other wonderful sights and activities. Yes, we've been back a while now, but I've only just started going thru the hundreds of photos to determine which ones to print. argh... digital is definitely good AND bad!! ;D And Donnie (my bro), who along with his girlfriend travelled with us, took WAY WAY WAY more photos than I did! We each have 9, yes NINE CDs full of photos - the CDs include Don's and my pics. Pretty much every night we downloaded our photos to Donnie's laptop and burned them to CD, so that we could clear our camera memory chips for the next day!

So anyway, without further ado, here are some photos and random comments about Venice.

We flew into Venice for one night pre-cruise. We took public transportation from the airport to the hotel, first a normal land bus, then a waterbus. We wandered around Venice both on foot and by waterbus. We stayed at a hotel right near the Rialto Bridge, one of only three bridges that cross the Grand Canal, and also one of the most famous Venice landmarks. (yep, that's our hotel on the right - the pink buildings!)
We were originally supposed to stay at a hotel on the other side of the Rialto, but the rooms there are really small, and the hotel manager moved us to their sister hotel where we enjoyed nicer accommodations. The only problem was dragging our luggage up and over the Rialto - twice within a half hour!!

Venice is a neat city, the buildings are old and beautiful, altho some do show their age.

As you may have heard, Venice is "sinking" - a tiny little bit each year. In actuality tho, it's the understructure that is causing the problem. Venice was built before motorized boats - it is the continual beating of the boat wakes against the understructure that is creating more and more damage. Venice is working to fix the damage, and many buildings show evidence of this work.


The "streets" and waterways are like a labyrinth. It is very easy to get lost in Venice, at least in the evening when you can't get a sense of direction from the sun. Greg and I tried to get back to the hotel, and it seemed like most paths dead-ended at small canals as well as the Grand Canal.

Venetian latte is NUMMY! Thick yet not bitter at all. Starbucks needs to take a few lessons over in Italy!

There are pigeons all over, but particularly at St. Mark's Square. Many tourists feed them, and you could see the pigeons literally crawling on folks to get food. It gives me the creeps just thinking about it!

St. Mark's Square and the surrounding area is SUPER crowded. People everywhere, pushing, shoving.

The Doge's Palace is a very neat building, very cool to see, but the audio tour focused almost entirely on the artwork in the building. I guess that's appropriate in Italy, a country known for the arts, but it became really boring after the first few rooms. However, the walk thru the prison and over the Bridge of Sighs was neat. I guess I would recommend to folks to take the "Secret Itinerary" tour (book ahead of time as it sells out!) if they want to hear about more than just paintings and stuff.

Talking about paintings and stuff... it was neat seeing artists at various locations around Venice, just drawing/painting away!

Venice is known for its glasswork, ok, well, actually it's Murano glasswork. But anyway, it IS beautiful! And there are shops, kiosks, stalls and booths everywhere that sell the glasswork, as well as Venetian masks, t-shirts and other souvenir type stuff.