Italy Diary - Venice

A true Venetian tourist ensures that a Gondola ride is part of their itinerary. So…in true tourist fashion, we found ourselves some gondolas.

I was amazed to find that the gondolas were fancily decorated. It was like a  "Pimp My Ride – Gondola Edition”. The drivers put quite a bit of money into their gondolas.

This was the one we rode…

It had such a “classy” feeling to it.

One of the many (409 to be exact) bridges in Venice. 

We had a mermaid leading the way…

This picture is courtesy of the gondola driver (who, by the way, did not sing to us. I was hoping for some “that’s amore”).

He was pretty excited to try to take a picture of us with two bridges behind us. We didn’t come out clearly, but the bridges are pretty.

Our trip started out through the grand canal (think New York traffic on water).  I managed to find a “calm” place to take a picture of the canal, though.

It was pretty foggy that day, but it didn’t take away from the beauty of the island.

Then we took side canals for the rest of our tour. There are no streets for cars in Venice, but the canals are just as narrow as the streets in other towns. When other boats would pass by us, either we or the other boat were scooting up against the building to pass by. Oh and boat drivers drive the same way they drive on the Autostrada (I had to close my eyes a few times during the ride!).

The history in Venice is jaw-dropping. Buildings are centuries old and they work hard to preserve them.

We saw Casanova’s house, a number of museums and Churches and just TONS of beautiful architecture.

This building was pretty neat, but these heads and birds were a little creepy.

This reminded me of something out of the  Davinci Code movie.

We never quite figured out what these were, but they were all around the island. We made up our own story that it was a public execution well. I’m sure we are pretty far off, but it made it things interesting.

This is a view of some of the houses in Venice. They make California yards look huge, don’t they? :)

See the little narrow alleys in between the buildings? Those are the “roads” for pedestrians and bicycles and we saw an occasional moped.

We ended up lost and could not find our way back to the train station. We felt like Ratatoullie walking through the alleys trying to find our way back. I knew I should have dropped bread crumbs or cheese! :) With the help of the GPS on my husband’s phone, we were able to find our way back (after 1 hour of dead ends).

The homes along the canal had both front doors in the alleys and back doors on the canal. You conveniently parked your boat then walked into your home. No docks, no walkways, nothing. Just a floating door.

We saw a lot of construction and renovation going on while there and I kept wondering how the construction dudes hauled their stuff around. There were bridges every few yards and I watched these men haul dollie after dollie of material to their destinations.

Then, we saw their “work trucks”, er, boat.

I would love to create a home with Italian designs and intricacies.

And just for fun, here are some pics of my husband and I taking “tourist” pictures.

And I actually handed my camera over to him….rare moment, I know.