Italy Part 1 - Venice

Hello again! We are finally putting together our blog posts about our trip to Italy in June/July. Of course it is January now and the details are a little fuzzy, but I can at least promise you some cool pictures and funny anecdotes. First, a little background about our adventure: This trip was conceived by myself and two classmates (Ashley and Jeremy) on a cold a dreary morning in Rochester. After finishing an intense test, we were lamenting the tedium of the school year and day-dreaming about how to spend our summer vacation after taking our National Board Examination in May. Of course we were throwing out all sorts of incredible destinations, but we got hooked on a hiking expedition through Banff National Park in Alberta, Canada. However, later that week my dear friend Ashley brought to our attention that it seemed silly to spend our precious two weeks of vacation time in cold mountains, exerting ourselves to the max to hike through mountains. "Wouldn't it be better" she said " to spend our vacation filling our bellies with good wine, good food, and relaxing?!". Of course! Brilliant! And so our trip to Italy was born!!!

We spent 10 days traveling from Venice, Cinque Terre, Florence, and Rome - some by plane, train, and automobile. It was a whirlwind tour and definitely one of the best trips I have ever been on to-date! People participating: Ashley, Jeremy, Alex, and me. Lodgings: all apartments/homes were booked through VRBO.com - a fantastic resource for quality housing at a great price! Now...let's begin at the beginning...getting to Venice.

We flew from Rochester to New York City to Paris to Venice. Pretty smooth flights, but we almost missed our connection in Paris because of the ridiculous system they had for filtering people through customs. Basically the louder you yell or plead with the staff the faster you get to jump the line. Thankfully we finally forced our way through and barely made our plane to Venice. The airport in Venice is small and located on the mainland of Italy, so we had to grab our bags, get some Euros, and then jumped on a bus to get to the islands of Venice. We arrived at the Piazzale Roma to find a water taxi to get further into the city. We had a little difficulty figuring out how to use the pay phone, but eventually were able to get in touch with our housing host and made our way into the city via water-taxi.

How do you use this thing?

On the street where we lived! The Arch of Paradise served as a great landmark.
The restaurant underneath turns up again later.

Day 1:
We arrived before our apartment was fully cleaned, so we dropped our bags and headed to Piazza San Marco to check out St. Mark's Basilica and Museo di Palazzo Ducale (The Doge's Palace Museum).

On the way to Piazza San Marco

We stopped in for a delicious snack on the way

While it was relatively early in the morning Venice-time we had been up for quite sometime with our transfer in Paris, so please forgive our jet-lagged faces in the pictures to follow. Also...the Doge's Palace has many, many, many rooms to explore! We were not aware of this fact prior to entry, so we were pretty exhausted after touring maybe 1/3 of the facility. If you really want to see this place in it's entirety and remember it well, then I would recommend you do so after a good nights sleep. ;0)

There was some pretty neat architecture and decoration in and around St. Marks and the Doge's Palace

Sighing on the bridge of sighs

We wound up spending several hours at the Doge's Palace.  By the time we reached the 3rd level of the prison, we just started walking through everything and looking for places to sit.

We explored the palace as best we could on dog-tired feet and then headed home to clean up and then out to dinner.

The restaurant we went to wasn't quite open yet, so we wandered a little bit, finding a little dock walk-out on the Grand Canal











 

 

The pistachio meringue was quite good

...and a tiny confectionery and wine bar, where we had a pistachio meringue and chocolate cookie with a house red.

The house wines tended to be quite tasty

We headed back over to the restaurant just as it opened.  We sat out along the street and enjoyed some white wine and an assortment of Sea Bass and pasta dishes.









By the time we finished dinner and meandered our way home, it was pretty late (and we'd been up for ages!).  So we settled in, had a night cap on the rooftop patio, and went to bed.

Day 2:
The next morning we hopped on a water taxi/bus over to Murano, the island famed for its glass factories.  We watched some glassworking, browsed around in any number of little shops, picked up some trinkets, and wandered our way through the quiet little island.

Some fancy glass works along a street

Window shopping along the canal

Crossing the main canal through Murano

We also had quite a tasty lunch in Murano.  Along our exploration we found some shops with various cheeses, prosciutto, tomatoes, grapes, and a little basil plant.  We walked along the canal and lagoon for a quiet place to sit and eat, and eventually found a little park bench in some shade.  Our snack was very fresh and extra tasty.

Best lunch ever!

We said goodbye to Murano and took the water taxi/bus back past the Doge's palace and the bridge of sighs, and over to St. Marks to see the basilica.

Home base...not too shabby!

After a quick pit stop and coffee break back at our home base, we headed back out to wander the city. 

In the ghet-tooooo

Our travel companion Jeremy is Jewish, and wanted to visit the first ever Jewish ghetto, located in the northern section of Venice.  It was an interesting stop, with very cramped little housing facing a wide open square (is that not the smallest 7-story building you've ever seen in the picture above?).

From there, we wandered throughout the city some more, buying some snacks and art, seeing the sights including the Rialto bridge, and looking for somewhere to eat.

We couldn't quite decide on a place to eat while we were out and about, so when we wound up back at our home we decided to just try the place downstairs. As it turns out, the Ristorante ai Barbacani was absolutely fantastic!  Our candlelit dinner beside the canal was serenaded by a wandering minstrel on his saxophone, while we enjoyed our delectable pasta dishes and wine.  With our appetites sated, the owner then came by to offer some Ouzo-type liqueur and his homemade Limoncello. What a treat!

The next day packed up, picked up our rental car, and said Ciao! to Venice...

Next stop: Cinque Terre!!!

~The Lorax~