Venice

What a unique city Venice is! I've never seen or experienced a city quite like this (Jon's been here before, like all of the other cities we visit!). Small canals run through the city at every turn with small bridges for people to get across. The Grand Canal runs in an S like shape with walking bridges. The streets can be so narrow at times that you have to walk in single file in each direction. There are no cars or scooters anywhere in the city. The mode of transportation throughout the city is by boat or walking. We even took a boat from the airport right to Piazza San Marco and then walked about five minutes to our hotel, which had two entrances: a water entrance and a walking entrance. Amazing.

Our hotel's water entrance.

One of many small canals.

We spent four days in Venice, with no agenda other than to walk around to each of the six different sections of the city and to have a blast on New Years Eve. We navigated through the different streets, alleys, and piazzas, passing gondolas, boats, and many many glass and mask shops along the way. We rode in a massively overpriced gondola through the small canals, passing small hotels and old buildings, and going under the cute bridges.

The Bridge of Sighs

At night.

Of course we can't forget about all of the eating we did...

That's a big calzone!

Ugh... I can't believe I ate the whole thing!

New Years Eve

New Years Eve

While strolling the different sections visited the Jewish Quarter and enjoyed seeing a mix of Hebrew and Italian on the buildings. While here we saw the Holocaust Memorial, which was very moving.

For New Years Eve we had made reservations at a restaurant that offered a 7 course meal for the night. 4 hours and 2 bottles of wine later we made our way to Piazza San Marco where a large crowd had formed (it was about 11:40), a concert was taking place, and people were dancing. We settled ourselves among the diverse crowd and waited for the countdown. Dieci, nove, otto, sette, sei, cinque, quattro, tre, due, uno, Buon Anno! Fireworks lit up the sky along the water and we couldn't help but think how lucky we were to be spending our new year in Italia.

In St. Mark's Square (Piazza San Marco)

The countdown.