Venezia (day two)

well, i'm home (meaning london) after another successful trip to michigan, which i saw through tourist eyes, explicitly for blogging purposes.

i'm feeling happy. the sun is shining, a cloud of ash and volcanic dust has grounded all flights in and out of the UK only a day after i've arrived, and i've got two days left of my easter holidays. so it's time to blog the end of Venice/the end of my Easter holidays so I can blog Michigan.

and then blog marathon pictures in six short weeks followed by my impending trip to Portugal a week after that.

So Venice...We broke up our last day into three parts: 1. espresso 2. Piazza de San Marco and 3. pursuit of a Gondola

Part One


if you look closely this tower leans


up the skirt of some gondolas


more Venetian architecture


our beautiful cafe with beautiful espresso in a beautiful square with beautiful music on a beautiful canal

Part Two

When writing these entries, it is often important to consult concise, factual sources such as Wikipedia. Its take on Piazza San Marco: 'As the central landmark and gathering place for Venice, Piazza San Marco is extremely popular with tourists, photographers, and pigeons'. Indeed.

after my brief foray with spanish wildlife i hold scavenging fowllike beasts in high contempt. So imagine my disgust when my second glimpse of Venice's central square happened to be this:


just why?

but i suppose there were some redeeming qualities


St. Mark's sqaure with 80 million tourists and a decidedly leaning tower





The Basilica...which also charges an exorbident fee of 2 euros if you happen to have bare shoulders and therefore need a large piece of cloth which suspiciously resembles a piece of cheesecloth to hide your lustiness


close up


inside, with covered shoulders


Doge's Palace close up (Palazzo Ducale de Venezia)


and a bit farther away

Part Three

Throughout our stay in Venice we were greeted by dashing Venetian men in Stripy tops trying to sell us rides up and down the canal. Until, of course, we actually wanted to get into a gondola and then they were scarce. So with four hours left in Venice we practically sprinted to the first gondolier we found.


view from a very expensive gondola ride


our beautiful, beautiful gondolier (who did sing to us)


gondolier marco: 'can you swim?'
us: 'um. why?'
marco: 'well, i'm not so good with this thing'.
us: 'um'.
marco: 'i just joke'.


we cleared this bridge by about a foot, only after tilting the boat roughly horizontally to the water


on the grand canal, again


the end. worth every penny


last stop: Bellinis near one bridge or another



and that's all she wrote. unless you'd like to hear me wax lyrical about ryanair and all its faults including queueing, queueing and non-european passport discrimination. These final photos may sum it up:


queueing to get on the plane


queueing to queue

we're ready for summer 2010!

Venezia (day one)

Venice was kind of one of those places where everything felt spectacular. Like everywhere you turn is going to look similar to where you just were but that doesnt' change the fact that it's all a little bit ungraspable. like hey, let's build a city on a bunch of water, watch it sink and still be amazed. like yes, we're a bit cliche, over the top and touristy, but that doesn't mean you're not going to love us still.

love it we did. as is evident from the 200 pictures taken over the course of three days.

we had a few adventures before even arriving including a two point five hour bus ride to Trieste where the bus stopped at the Slovenian border and a woman resembling Morticia Addams came to sloooooowly inspect every single person's passport (second Addams family run in on the trip). We then were shuffled through an immigration office where a sullen man stamped, stamped, stamped away all passports and then were herded back out the office, across an actual line and then herded back onto the bus that moved a total of thirty feet ahead. Welcome to europe.


last two seats on the back of the bus, wedged between a scary looking Addams family Croatian lookalike, three jolly, senior Italians and no airconditioning vents

I slept much of the ride through Slovenia, but from what I remember it all looked very green, mountainy and beautiful. Our short tryst in trieste involved finding the train station, triple checking that we purchased the correct tickets and hopping on the train next to some spectacularly dressed italians. two hours later we ended up in the outer stations of venice without a clue for how to get to our hostel. not that finding it was much better...


the view from our 'lovely' camping village venezia located, i kid you not, at the direct back of Venice Leonardo da Vinci airport's airfield; 3am landings, 6am departures. you may think, wicked, easy commute to the airport. oh no. we flew Ryanair and were thus located at the 'out of town' airport a further 45 minutes away.

there were perks, i suppose: a crowd of loud australians, two swimming pools, our own air conditioned prefab cabin and a once an hour shuttle bus to the city. staying in venice proper is far too expensive, especially after a week in mega-cheap Croatia, so we did the best we could.


The Grand Canal and our first glimpses of Venice


second glimspe of Venice. we, on that stop, determined this city is for us


more grand canal


the unfortunate circumstance of there being 500 canals in venice is that jen and i could never, ever figure out where we were. we walked ourselves in venetian circles without fully knowing/understanding what we were looking at


something pretty


jen and the bridge without a parapet, one of three left in the city. health and safety, you know.


gondolier


gelato in the very hot afternoon sun somewhere in the sleepy Jewish quarter, our favourite part of the city






Gondola traffic


The Rialto (crammed with upwards of 5000 people at a time, mostly annoying American tourists wearing sneakers and hip packs. we avoided central Venice at all costs)




i'm aware that the reality of living in Venice is rather sad; the youth/young adult population is diminishing due to the expense of living in Venice and the lack of professional jobs. add that to living in a place consistently rammed with tourists, with strict laws/codes about building/renovating and yeah okay, not so much. but driving a boat to work? definite benefits.


looking left and/or right on any given street


looking up on any given street


my starter, eek!


mains: me, my venetian sardines and my venetian sardine face. another brave food attempt for me...thankfully there were no heads attached to the fish under the layer of onions and rocket.


this photo perhaps epitomises the entire trip

and it's only the beginning of venice...