Beautiful Venice

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I needed to use my Eurail for Italy so I decided to do a day trip to Venice and Pisa this weekend. That Friday I went with Courtney and Blake to Cafe Liberta then hopped on a train to Venice! I fell in love with the city! It is absolutely gorgeous! The canals are the roads and the water is so blue!

Imagine a city where the roads are waterways and the sidewalks are cobblestone walkways around old, beautiful buildings. There are piazzas or plazas all throughout the city with gorgeous fountains and cute little designer stores.

We took a bus ferry along the ocean to a stop near Piazza San Marco. The roads were packed with tourists here and little shop carts lined the streets filled with Venice souveneirs and glittery masks. San Marco Cathedrl was absolutely beautiful and seemed so ancient. The ceilings were so high and there was mosaic gold everywhere. A lot of the church was being renovated and it seemed like it'd be even more beautiful when it was completed. Apparently the ocean sometimes overflows the city so high that it floods the streets and squares that walkways on stilts need to be used for walking. I'd never known that.

Another thing, San Marco Square has the unusual ability to draw pigeons to its presence. And I don't mean 20 or 30 pigeons. I mean hundreds of thousands of pigeons that come right up to you and in my case, land on your head. It's a little ridiculous but fun too when you feed them food. After this we walked throughout wandering the winding streets and getting lost in the maze that is Venice. We walked across a big bridge--known for its shops all around the area and the big outdoor market. After eating some fruit from the market, we found our way back to the train station and waited for our train. We walked into a church to look around and ate some gelato then got on our train back to Florence. I loved spending the day in Venice and hopefully will be able to go back some day and take a gondola ride!

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