Venice!

Our last hurrah in Italy!

After Cinque Terre, we hopped on a train for 7 hours and went to Venice.  Let me tell you, I love this city.  It was completey overrun with tourists (they get an average of 50,000+ tourists/day) but I don't care.  I realize it's a city made up of more tourists than natives, but it's still so engulfing to be on this improbably floating island, surrounded by the tempestuous sea, embracing the decaying glory of an urban Renaissance city while surrounded by the remnants of a golden society...

 Gondola with a Pallado-designed church across the canal.

 Seriously, who builds a city on an island (and keeps using that city) that floods dozens of times a year and residents?  Crazy, yet awesome people.  These buildings are amazing, historical, and so full of character, and the canals have so much activity always happening on them.  I've never seen anything like it.  

Nighttime at the Rialto Bridge - the main one in town (the bridge during the day is pictured below).  It's amazing to watch the absolute traffic jams on the canals with gondoliers, ferries, taxis, water buses and personal watercraft attempting to navigate this place.  We sat, fascinated, for 30 minutes as the sun set.

 Crazy full of tourists. 

  This is from our last night in Venice.  Kay's feet were really tired, so we found a convenient place for her to rest. :)

St. Marks Square & Cathedral with the Ducal Palace to the right.  Seriously, a magical city.

 

Brian and I spent our last few hours in Venice away from the crowds, sitting on a bench in a park, watching the water traffic go by.  It was such a lovely way to end a busy trip to Italy.  Now that we've hit all the major tourist spots, we'll hopefully go back in the future and just feel the freedom to bask in the pasta, whoops, tuscan sun.

I hope that everyone who came to visit us this summer knows that I hope to blog about their trips here, but understand that it's been way easier to blog backwards (because of my memory) and this week I had some free time to slug out Italy (I think I wrote 6 posts in one day)!  We'll see how motivated I can stay...