Day 14 - Venice, The Only Place in Italy Without Vespas

Sorry for the delay, there was yet more slow wifi issues to deal with.

When last we blogged we were about to get on a train to Italy, but first the Handlers wanted to explore Dijon a little. Because there was no place to check their luggage, however, they were stuck with wandering the city one at a time (at night). They managed to find a few interesting things in the old city centre, and competed to see who had discovered the most.

Then the train arrived, we hopped aboard and found our cabin which was...cramped. Let me just say, if you have ever had thoughts of the magic of overnight train travel, with the motion of the train rocking you to sleep like a boat....yeah, that doesn't exist. It's rather uncomfortable, and you keep getting jerked awake whenever you pull into a station. Regardless, the train did its job and deposited us all at the Venice train station bright and early the next morning.

If you hadn't guess already, there was a lot of beautiful stuff to photograph along the Grand Canal. Handler 1 was in her element.

Rialto Bridge

After quickly checking into our hotel, we began by wnadering the city and trying to get away from the crowds of tourists. We eventually made our way across the Rialto to the quieter side of Venice. There we had pizza lunch near a famous old church.

We saw a number of interesting things on our walk, like this neat old building.

Then there was this modern art piece in a random church comprised entirely of thousnds of painted Russian eggs.

We also stopped by the fish market, which is more of an "all foods" market, and watched Venetian merchants ply their trade.

This one's just for Carolyn.

We then headed over to St. Mark's cthedral, notable for its Byzantine styling. The Venetians built this monstrosity to hold the body of St. Mark, which a number of enterprising Venetian traders had smuggled away from its resting place (amongst heathens) in Alexandria. The initiative of these model citizens is immortalized in mosaic inside the church.

Here's a view of the horses (well, replicas anyways) that Venice stole from Constantinople. And yes, if you haven't figured it out yet, Venice is very proud of its pillaging past.

Handler 2 was impressed that he ran across this "wall art" which is by a famous graffiti artist (and no, I'm totally not kidding about that).

Look, we're on a gondola!

Next it was off to the Doge's palace, which was open fairly late and was able to accomodate us.

The Doge's Palace was not nearly as impressive and overbering as some of the places we went to in France, which may be a reflection of the Doge's actual position (Handler 2 discovered that they were basically powerless and couldn't even leave the city without express permission).

And for anyone who ever played Final Fantasy VIII, an honest-to-God gun-sword.

Having now hit all of the "highlights of Venice, we would now be able to move on to the "lesser lights". However, first the Handlers went back to the room for some rest, wherein they cracked open their bottle of vouvray and headed up to the porch on top of the hotel. There they st overlooking the Doge's palace and watched the stars come out. Later, when it got too cold, they moved inside and watched yet more televised fencing, before heading out to a nice local dinner.