Venice, City of Doges.

Day Eight: July 3rd

The day really wasn't that interesting, a traveling day. We went to meet our ride at the Santa Maria Novella train station and wandered the area for a bit, stopping in a second hand shop, admiring the Santa Maria Novella plaza and church facade, and eating our sandwiches. We met up with Alessio, our ride, around 1pm and started talking to him about what all we had done in Florence, and Jeff mentioned that he had tried and failed to get to Fiesole for the view. So guess what? He took us there before we went to Venice! He was really cool. The view from Fiesole is AMAZING. Florence truly is a beautiful city, up close and far away alike. 

In Venice that evening, we brought groceries, FINALLY washed our clothes, and drank some wine over dinner. We honestly needed a break evening as in Florence we had been booking it all over the place. 

Day Nine: July 4th: INDEPENDENCE DAY! 

First day in Venice: We got up, got our tickets to the Venice Islands (um, if anyone hasn't been to Venice, apparently there are two parts to the city: the main land, and then a big island. I was not aware of this (Oblivious American Alert) and thought that it was all mainland and just had canals running into the land. Anyway, we got to the Island and immediately got lost, which really is what should happen because Venice is awesome to get lost in. No matter what, you'll always end up going back in the right direction (remember? It's an island) and sometimes even when you think you're far from your destination, you're actually right around the corner. This happens because a lot of the streets all have the same names! Or have two different names! Or just aren't on the map! We ran into this dead end street that had an awesome little shop with things we wanted to buy, but it was closed. The shop owner had put books and other little articles outside the shop and had padlocked a drop box to the door so if you wanted something, you can put money inside, but we wanted things that were inside the shop. We didn't even know where we were when we found this place, but we vowed to come back to it. 

Well anyway, eventually we made it to Saint Mark's Square.

 We listened to Rick Steve's audio guide of the Piazza, then went to the Doge's Palace. (For my internet friends: yes, there really is  place called Doge's palace. Doge is how you say Duke in Italian. It did not stop being funny the entire time).

 The palace was really beautiful, but my favorite part was the giant room with all the Doge's painted in order on the frieze, except one Doge who had attempted a coup d'état and whose name and portrait was blacked out. Clearly no one else tried that. 

We then went to the big bell tower in the square that was originally built hella long ago but collapsed in 1902, and they rebuilt it exactly the way it had been. We got to be up there when the bells rang for the half hour, which was a really cool experience.

 The view was pretty spectacular, too. 

We decided not to go into the Basilica, mostly just because we have seen a lot of churches already and hadn't heard anything too spectacular about this one. We walked around a garden near the square and then decided to find a place to relax and drink some wine for a while. If that's not the most unpatriotic Independence Day you've ever heard of, I don't know what would be. 

Day Ten: July 5th

We've been slowing down a little bit, because vacationing is tiring! We slept in and then went to the Correr museum in Saint Mark's Square. We've gotten to the point that we run past any Madonna and Childs. We've seen so many we just don't want to see any more! Jeff's favorite thing here was a painting of the battle of the fists, which is a painting of a bunch of guys just punching each other on a bridge. It's pretty funny. But I think my favorite part was the room about 18th century Venetian sunglasses.

 Venice is the area where glass blowing first really kicked off, so of course glasses became a big deal there. Apparently it was all the rage to have bright green sunglasses to protect your eyes (and what's crazy is that they actually filtered out 90% of the UV rays, something that most modern sunglasses still don't do). But I can just imagine Venice being full of men and women in old-time dress with bright green glasses and it cracks me up. 

My other favorite part also had to do with glass: the chandeliers in the museum were gorgeous. They were all really delicate glass and had lots of colorful flowers adorning them. So beautful! 

This day involved a bit of getting lost as well. We'd seen a flyer for a play at an ex-convent and wanted to try to go, so we tried to find it. Only the map said there was a through street when in reality there were walls, so we basically ended up between a giant wall and what seems like it might have been a military base or something. The searching tired us out, too, but we still had one more very important mission for Venice: a gondola ride! We found our way back to civilization and hired a gondola for forty minutes (the shortest time you can ride for, as those rides are not cheap).

 It was probably not as good as it could have been, what with that being a kind of romantic thing and Jeff and I obviously not fitting that category, but it was fun. All the gondoliers talked to each other when they passed us and it was really funny wondering what they were talking about, pondering if they ever had competitions between them. I think maybe half of Jeff and my conversations involved fake conversations we imagine fake people having with each other. 

Guess what we did then? That's right: Gelato. 

Day Eleven: July 6th, Beach Day! 

That's not an official holiday like the July 4th one, but I felt it had to be named. At this point in our journey, we really had no set plans about what to do next, so we decided we would stay another day in Venice, then go to Bologna for a day, then head back to Rome before flying out on the 10th. Since we'd already done most of what we wanted to do on the main Venice island, we decided to take the water bus to Lido island and have a beach day!

I didn't take any pictures with my camera on the island, because generally sand and expensive cameras do not mix. But going to the beach was the perfect thing to do. Lido is beautiful, and even though the beach was really crowded, it was one of the best I've been too because the water was so shallow I could stand 100 meters out. I'm not a huge fan of swimming, but I love floating and wading and standing in shallow water and this was perfect for that. We just went out to where our heads were above the waves, but still far from the crowds, and that was great. That mediterranean sun is HOT though. I got burned on my back, even with using a ton of sunscreen, but it has already turned to a tan. On our way back, we got some of the best gelato we've had yet: and cheapest too! Lido wins!