A City in the Sea

We spent last weekend away visiting gorgeous, charming Venice. From the moment we walked out of the airport, I fell in love with the city. I felt, as best I can describe it, like I spent the weekend wandering around a picturesque movie set. For my friends who might not be familiar with Venice, it is basically a little city plopped down in the middle of the sea. However, the city has no roads - everywhere you'd expect to see a road, there is instead a waterway, and everyone commutes around in boats instead of cars. Taxis...buses...ambulances...you name it. All boats. There is not a scooter in sight, which felt really odd considering I'm accustomed to having to dive for my life out of the way of aggressive scooters on a daily(hourly?) basis. The city is small enough that we were able to walk clear across it in a little over an hour, but there is still plenty more to see than we could fit in to a weekend. Narrow little cobbled lanes were filled with incredible shop after incredible shop, and Roland said it best when he described all of the little shops as looking like little "Aladdin's caves." Ladies take note: shopping heaven. Venice is also the home of the ancient art of glassblowing, so almost every other shop was overflowing with beautiful, hand blown glass pieces of art. They were, in a word, stunning...and by the look of their price tags, they knew it.

I have so many gorgeous photos from Venice, I dont even know where to start. Here is a selection...

Here is the water taxi we took from the airport to our hotel. There was a dock full of them behind the airport, which brought us straight to the dock in front of our hotel. How cool is that?

The interior of our water taxi.

Looking out the back of the water taxi, leaving the airport.

My first view of Venice! Taken as the water taxi entered the town from the airport.

Our hotel, taken from the dock in front. The windows to our room were on either side of the word "Europa" on the front of the hotel.

Here is a view out of the window of our hotel room, at some gondolas passing by. The gondoliers were singing to their passengers in Italian.

Here are Roland and I and two friends on another water taxi, on our way to the island of Murano - which is where all of the glass is blown.

This man was the "master at work" at the Murano glassblowing factory we toured. In this photo, he was making a glass figurine of a horse. Basically, he pulled a slab of (boiling-lava-hot) molten glass on the end of the pole he is holding, and spend about 2 minutes pulling and shaping it with a giant pair of tweezers.

This was the result! Amazing. Especially considering that this 2 minutes of work was fetching upwards of 150 euros for a similar piece in the showroom. Yikes! But the glass artists are truly talented, and the glass pieces produced on this tiny island are sold worldwide.

 

This is one of the showrooms in the glass factory showcasing pieces made downstairs in the factory. The chandeliers were amazing!

And here are several more photos from walking around throughout Venice...

One of the famous gondolas up close. We didn't take a ride in one this time, but it was cool just to see them in action up and down the waterways, singing to their passengers. Definitely makes the gondola ride I took at Cesar's palace in Las Vegas look pretty sad in comparison...

Roland saying goodbye to Venice out the window of our hotel room. Ciao, Venice! Hope to see you again soon!