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Published: March 6th 2006
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Gondola light
This is the most photogenic city in the world... Sorry for the corny play on Thomas Mann- I didn't find any golden haired Polish boys. *Sigh*
We arrived in Venice at night at the Mestra station. Mollie called our hotel and we waited across the street at the Plaza Hotel for the van to come and pick us up. We kept joking that any of the crappy vans driving by could be for us. But the van that did pull up wasn’t so bad after all. We drove quite a ways into the country to the Villa Dori. When we got out the first thing I noticed was the smell like a sewer. But apparently that happens sometimes. The interior of the hotel is very nice and our room had fabric on the walls and a towel warmer in the bathroom. Sweet.
The next morning I got early and dressed to go to breakfast at theTantra restaurant next door. The place was decorated with Louis XIV chairs, IKEA lamps, a zebra striped piano bar and lots of purple and gold. The table I sat at had details from some Tantric love manual painted on it. It was awesome. The breakfast, for 5 euros, wasn’t bad either. I
Ponte Rialto
One of only THREE bridges that crosses the Grand Canal had cereal, various bread products and OJ. It was the kind of breakfast that would put Dad in a sugar coma.
When I got back to the room the girls were just waking up so I went out on a walk around the neighborhood. It’s a nice place, with single family homes and a elementary school and library. I wandered over to the supermarket and then back to the hotel. I found which direction we had to go to catch the bus too, so when the girls were ready we bought tickets at the front desk and set out to explore Venice!
We waited at the bus stop for awhile, but the bus finally came and we got to Venice proper in about 20 minutes. We drove out across the causeway and it was amazing to see a city sitting out there in the middle of a lagoon. When we got off the bus we headed, somewhat blindly, toward the Rialto bridge and San Marco Square. The thing about Venice is that it is a complete maze. The streets are narrow alleys and the most unlikely turn will lead you into a large piazza or across
Carnival Revelers In Venice
These were my favorite costumes. a canal. Thank God there were signs that pointed towards the bridge or we would never have made it.
San Marco Square was pretty busy, with pigeons and people. Carnaval was in full swing, so couples dressed in the most beautiful costumes were walking around and posing for pictures. Mollie and I looked inside Saint Mark’s and then we went over to the Doge’s Palace. This was really cool, because there weren’t a lot of people and the rooms were all really beautiful and I felt like I actually learned something about the history and political structure of the Venetian city-state. The Prisons creeped me out though because I could imagine men waiting in the dark and cold to be put on trial.
After the Doge’s Palace we tried to find a good gelato place, but failed until we stumbled past one not 500 feet from the bus station. The ironies of life. I had molasses and strawberry. Odd combination maybe, but delicious.
When we got back to the outskirts of Venice we went to the supermarket and got bread, cheese, yogurt and wine cooler to have for dinner. When Bridget opened the wine
Murano glass
Making a fish's fin out of molten glass about three feet from me bottle it sprayed all over her and the floor and the wall before she got it into the bathroom. Thank God the walls were already red. Besides that it was good eating.
Next morning the other girls got up early too and got to enjoy the wonder of the Tantra restaurant. I have no idea who their clientele is because I saw mostly old people out and about yesterday. Today our main objective was the island of Murano out in the lagoon- it’s were all the Venetian glass is made. We took a water taxi out there and first thing off the boat we saw some demonstrations. We spent the rest of the morning ducking in and out of glass shops to hide from the nasty wind and rain. I noted that the prices went down the farther from the vaporetti station you got. We found some place to eat and I had spaghetti for my last meal in Venice. Then we went back and bought all our gifts and such and left on the express taxi back to Venice.
I really wanted to go to a bookshop on the Ponte Rialto that does handbinding, so we powerwalked over there, winding like maniacs through the streets. As the crow flies it was probably seven minutes walking, but it took us twenty minutes. If you didn’t know how to get where you wanted to go, you could never do anything in this city. I don’t know how people find their hotels again. I bought an address book that they handbound in the shop and then we ran back to the bus station, caught a bus back to the hotel, picked up our stuff, took another bus back to Venice and then bought food for the overnight train to Paris. We then had to get across the Grand Canal one more time to the station.
Venice is a very cool place, because it is like no other city in the world. I would like to come back some time and explore it more. But next time I will stay in the city itself. Outside is cheaper, but it’s also the biggest pain in the world to get there and back. But the people were friendly and except for that first time off the shuttle it didn’t smell bad again.
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