Italy Fall 2005: Venice

What can I say? Venice is amazing. We took a bus from Cortina to a train station, then shot down to Venice. The train actually goes across the water to the island..pretty exciting. We had a wonderful ride down, then got off the train to find our hotel. We stayed on Lido Island, which was much less expensive than Venice. We got over to Lido, and ran into other classmates and check into the hotel. We then met up with our professor around 2 to start our tour.

We got on a boat and headed over to Burano Island. Below here, you can see the first church on the Venice island chains. This is where the original settlement of Venice occurred. Some of the native estuarine community still remains, as seen in the foreground.

Here's the church from an adjoining garden.

The island of Burano has amazing colors!

Beautiful sunset on the boatride back over to Lido.

We all went back to Lido for dinner at a Chinese Restaurant. Go figure! It was actually kind of exciting to not eat pasta for one meal (although I still love Pasta 2 months into this!) Several of us had a few drinks after dinner, then Joel and I took a boat over to Venice around midnight. It was so stunningly beautiful at night...St. Mark's and the Doges palace were lit up beautifully...you really get a sense of depth on these buildings at night. The whole town was deserted, so it was nice to really see Vencie without the massive tourist crowds. We all got up early the next morning and met our Professor Phil over on Venice to start our tour.

St Mark's with the Doges Palace on the right

St. Marks from inside the Doges Palace

Entry to the Doges Palace. This is where all dignitaries would enter when Venice was ruled from here.

Doges Palace

Angel of Venice

We had a fantastic tourguide that took us through part of the city and gave us a history background. While on the tour, we enountered this kitty...now the most photographed kitty in Venice!

Then we wandered around Venice with Phil. Here's a view across the grand canal from the fish market.

The next day, I went on my quest for the men holding the gold ball. Here, I've just crossed the academia bridge (wood one in the back) and am trying to find them!