Wednesday, May 29, 2013

Italia: Day 2a - Venice

Tuesday morning, we woke up to a lovely breakfast delivered to our room.
Best breakfast we had the whole week.
This meal will also go down in history as the morning we discovered NUTELLA.
a.m.a.z.i.n.g.
and italian caffe lattes. y.u.m.

We opened our pretty window to discover our balcony. [we knew it was there, but it is still fun to open the curtain in venice and remember your room has a balcony over the canal.]
Then I began the process of attempting to use the little key we were given to open the doors to the balcony.
fast forward 20 minutes. we're now on the balcony. 
Look to the left....
 and to the right...
 Look straight ahead... [oh hi!]
 and up... [hello neighbors!]

We loaded up our layers and coats and hats and gloves and headed out for a morning of adventure!
But first, a few pictures on the little bridge right outside our bed and breakfast.
 below... be prepared for my AMAZINGLY GORGEOUS SISTER.

See that little balcony with greenery on it and the three windows? that was our balcony. :) 
And the little door just beyond the bridge? our b&b. :)

 Venice is SO cool in that all the buildings are like this... so close together with tiny alleyways to walk through. Carly was such a pro at walking through with her umbrella, closing it just long enough to pass people, then opening it again. I, meanwhile, was whacking the wall or people or myself trying to close my umbrella for passers. Carly of course didn't see this since she was way ahead of me. It was very difficult to capture this scenario on camera, so you'll just have to envision it with me.
little boats everywhere. so cute.
 loved their street signs. yellow for tourist locations and white for street names.
 sweet little bridge. these were everywhere.
 We arrived at our first official destination... the market! 

Then we found the Rialto Bridge, part two. We decided to stay on this side of the canal this time instead of crossing it like we did yesterday.
I always enjoy capturing Carly in her element. 
Here I'm sure she was saying something like "are you gonna take it or what" 
This is a bit of that flooding I mentioned. See the table-like things? Those are to walk on when the city floods. Crazy! It was of course raining the whole time, which you can't really tell in pictures.
All part of the adventure!
 We found a pay phone and I couldn't resist making a {pretend...ok you caught me} phonecall on it. 
Carly told me to pretend like I was talking to someone. 
Obviously I'm not a very good pretender.

my cute little sister!!


 Check out their farmacies! There is one on almost every street corner.
Here we have the 'green cross.' 


 Around this time, we realized we only had like 2 hours to move through Venice before our train to Florence, so we decided to track down a vaporetto to get us to St Mark's faster. 
We were so glad we did! It was a little city tour by boat!
again... I enjoy capturing Carly in her element. 'can you move I can't see'
gondolas!
We hopped off the vaporetto at St Mark's and found a couple pigeons...
[I heard there are thousands of pigeons. apparently, not when it's raining.]


See that tower? I thought it would be fun to take the elevator to the top.
It was so worth it.

 But. It was SO C.O.L.D.!!! and SOOOO windy!
 {raindrop/tear frozen to my face}
 Of course while we were up there, it was top of the hour, so the bell started dinging.
Which was so crazy loud.
But really added to the story. :)
 By the time we got down, we were frozen. So we tracked down some hot chocolate. 
Thank goodness for hot chocolate!!!

Then we {quickly} walked back to our B&B, picked up our stuff, and ran for our train. 
Which we caught just in time. 
And off to Florence we went!!


So, what did we think of Venice?
We LOVED it.
It was our favorite part of our trip. 
The city felt safe. Our bed and breakfast was amazing. Food was yummy. Sights were pretty.
Venice is unlike anything I've ever seen. I think that's what intrigued me most.
Even if it was pouring rain and freezing cold the whole time.
Did I mention the day we left... as in while we were on the train to Florence, it SNOWED in Venice? 
Yah, it was really cold.

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