Venice

Since I was a teenager, I've had 3 places I really wanted to visit.  A few more have been added since then, but my top three for the last 20 years have been:

1. Germany
2. Italy
3. Australia and New Zealand

Really, it was more specific than that.  I had specific sites I wanted to see, and anything else I saw in the country after that would be great, but I really wanted to see these things:

1. Neuschwanstein Castle
2. Venice
3. The Great Barrier Reef

After 20 years of waiting, I got to see Neuschwanstein over Christmas, and now only a month later, I am visiting Venice!!!!! 

Finally here!  On the steps of the train station.

FIL is pretty excited too!  And looking much more photogenic than me, I am jealous. 

It was nearly as great as I expected, I certainly was excited when I walked out of the train station and saw the canal.  I think I somehow thought that Carnivale would be happening all the time, so it was a little calmer than I expected, but that turned out to be a good thing.   I love being near the water, so it was like a breath of fresh air (literally and figuratively, since the infamous smell didn't roll in until later in the day) when I walked out of our hotel and immediately got a great view of the canal every morning.  Every time I saw the water it helped me feel a little more at peace.  Going to Italy in January may not be ideal, but it worked out pretty well for Venice, because instead of the hot stinky sewer smell I have heard so much about, the air was mostly clean and crisp, especially in the morning.  Hubby complained about the smell, but in my opinion it was nonexistent during parts of the day, and only mild during the other parts.

View from right out front of our hotel.  Not bad!

Nearly every time we crossed a bridge, I would stop at the top and take in the view.  I enjoyed them all, but of course some we better than others.  Even seeing the same canal over and over did not get old for me, especially as the light changed throughout the day.

One thing I didn't expect was that it was a little TOO quiet, especially being off-season for tourist.  The first night when we went out to walk around we didn't run into many people.  When we went back out for dinner, we were walking for about 20 minutes (we got lost), and saw only a handful of people, and lots of closed shops and shutters on homes.  It was kind of eerie.  Daytime brought everyone out and the atmosphere perked up.  The other thing I wasn't expecting is that the streets were very confusing and hard to navigate.  It didn't help that some were tiny and we didn't expect those to be mapped or labeled streets, and others were at such a funny angle that you couldn't even see them if you weren't standing in the right place! 

Do you see the intersecting street in the middle picture?  We didn't either until someone came walking out of it, like MIL is coming out of it in the picture on the right (see if you can spot her in the middle picture).  No wonder we missed it the first time through.

Maybe that is why most people stick to navigating by boat and not trying to walk through the streets.  Everything was done by boat: ambulance, milk delivery, trash pickup, even funerals!

 

We got a kick out of refrigerated delivery boats like this.  The white part is the refrigerator, you can see the compressor hanging off the back of that portion when it passes by.

Hubby saw this funeral from the public transport boat.  The canals make even a funeral look beautiful!

But the beauty made up for the frustrations, especially when you got to view it from the water.

I took a free trip out to Murano Island just outside of Venice.  This is where the famous glass comes from.  I got to watch a glass blowing demonstration by father and son artists, and walk through a gallery showcasing the work of many artist’s pieces for sale.  Way too expensive for me, but I did enjoying seeing them and found a pretty piece in the gift shop that was till genuine Murano glass.   

The red stuff at the end of those poles is molten hot glass!  When cooled it was a light blue color.  They had a lot of different types of chandeliers.  When we win the lotto I am coming here for all my light fixtures.

The best part of that excursion for me was the boat ride over and back.  The day before, hubby and I were admiring the beautiful wood paneled taxi boats that were too expensive for us to want to take.  Low and behold, that is kind of boat I got to ride over in!  The passenger compartment was like a limo inside, with the back portion having a Plexiglas roof, and having doors at the front to keep the cold out.  And I got to ride in it for free!  I was super excited.  There were also gorgeous views from Murano that I got to take in while I waited for my ride back.

The boat on the bottom is the one I took back, it looked the same as the one I took out except it was missing the gorgeous wood, like in the above picture.  The inside of the cabin was like a limo!

After my tour I met hubby, MIL and FIL at the Piazza San Marco, where we toured St Mark's Basilica.  The interior, and even some of the exterior, of this cathedral was covered in sparkling gold mosaics. Also cool was being able to go out onto the balcony and catch the view from up there.

 

The exterior of the cathedral and views from the balcony.  The mosaics were in those round cutouts over each door.

We weren't allowed to take pictures inside, but these are some of the mosaics over the doors on the exterior.  If they put this much detail, and gold, into the outside, you can imagine what the inside was like!

At the time of writing this, we have now been to Venice, Florence, and Rome.  So far Venice is still my favorite.  Even though there weren't many sights to see, the beauty of the city and the canals, as well as feeling like we had the whole place to ourselves at times, is what made this my favorite.  So glad I finally made it :)

Oh, and no, we didn't ride in a gondola ;)