Venice: The Floating City

Spring Break 2011 topped all other spring breaks. It doesn't get much better than Venice, Rome, and Athens. This blog is the first of three about my spring break adventures. I was going to try and combine them all into one post, but who am I kidding, that would've been way too many pictures and things to try and blog about.

Venice was one of my favorite cities. The words that automatically come to mind when I think of Venice are masks, bridges, romance, canals, and gondolas. Venice is a sight for sore eyes. It is hard to visually take everything in because everything and everywhere in Venice is so visually pleasing. I have always romanticized Venice, and it lives up to it's expectations. We first ventured into Venice early on a Sunday morning. We had no map and just picked a direction. We managed to find the non-touristy part of Venice, so we were able to walk around the winding streets and alleyways without running into a soul. It was a very peaceful and nice introduction to Venice. There are boats literally everywhere, as are there bridges everywhere - it's amazing.  Here are some pics from our Sunday morning wanderings:

After a bit of wandering we found a vaporetto, which is a waterbus. We took the bus to the main part of Venice, la Piazzo San Marco. Here we went to St. Mark's Basilica. The inside of it was absolutely stunning. The entire ceiling is made up of a gold mosaic which covers every inch of the ceiling. It was beautiful. We wandered around the Piazzo San Marco for a while. There were a ton of shops and eateries. Pretty much the entire time we were in Italy we ate pizza and gelato...for every single meal. I may have had pasta once or twice, but pretty much every other meal was pizza and gelato. After doing some major tourist shopping, five of us girls went on a gondola tour. It was hands down my favorite thing I did in Venice. I hadn't expected to take a gondola ride because I had heard they were so expensive; however, a guy asked if we wanted to take a ride and told us his price which wasn't bad at all. So worth it. Our gondola man's name was Antonio (or at least thats what I named him) and he was straight out of a movie. Actually our entire ride was. He gave us a history of Venice, but I didn't understand a single thing he said because he had such a thick italian accent. He sang to us in Italian and instead of rowing sometimes he would just push off the walls. It was such an amazing experience. Pics below:

 Gondolas 

 St. Mark's Basilica (above)

 Piazzo San Marco 

 Antonio 

 Gondola ride 

 They really do hang their laundry outside the window!

 Antonio and I matched! 

After our gondola ride we met back up with the rest of our group, ate pizza and did some more shopping and sightseeing! The next few pics are just some sights of Venice, the first two are of the Grand Canal.

 The masks were everywhere and they were beautiful! 

 The Venetian glass was so colorful and beautiful.

 Caleb may have decided to jump into the Grand Canal, we're not sure why, but it was very entertaining.

Well that basically sums up my trip to Venice. Pictures describe it so much better than my words can, which is why I did less writing and more pics for this post. (Plus its late and I'm tired). I just updated on my day trip to Bath right before this and next I will update on the rest of Spring Break and eventually I will get caught back up! Tomorrow I leave to go meet my family in London and I get to show them England! Should be fun!