Be Italian!

Oh Fergie, you couldn’t have said it better. Her anthem from the movie ‘Nine’ was our personal anthem, for this day, our first in Venice. We have played the part well I think.

This morning came earlier than any day should, 3:30am to be precise. Our flight was at 6:30 this morning, but having been to our fair share of airports on this trip, we knew it could either go really fast or take forever and we didn’t want to take our chances. The airport provided only one slight scare. During our early morning breakfast, I was taking a couple experimental photos and apparently had put my lens cap on the tray, not noticing it stayed on the tray when the worker came to clear it. In a panic ten minutes later when Kris suggested that that might have been where my lens cap ended up, I was able to find the worker, directed to the right trash can and dig my way to my lens cap. Totally disgusting but relieved all the same. After a short flight, with little amenities and minimal leg room (it is Ryan Air after all) we arrived into Treviso and took an hour bus ride into Venice.

Words are hard to describe this city. Pictures help. But in the end, its being there, in the thick of it that puts it to justice. This city has clearly worked very hard to keep up its high decorum; colorful buildings, cobblestone streets, unique bridges every which way leading over small waterways and plenty of fancy churches, restaurants and monuments to boot. It is the only city I’ve ever been to where getting lost feels fulfilling and not frustrating. And believe me, getting lost is easy to do.

Most of the day was spent walking amongst the alleyways winding our way to see both The Rialto Bridge, the largest and most famous of the Grand Canal bridges and St. Marco Piazza, home of the basilica and government buildings. The afternoon food consisted of Gino’s Pizza and some freakin’ awesome gelato. Kris did get a chance to see the inside of St. Mark’s Basilica. I offered to watch the bags while she roamed around and vice versa so that we wouldn’t have to check them. Well as typical Matt luck would have it, they closed the doors on me right before I could walk in. That’s not even an exaggeration. There was one guy in front of me and we secured front row seats to the cold-hearted sealing of the front doors, with nary a “sorry” in the process. My solace comes in the fact that we’ll most likely make another trip to the area tomorrow. We were feeling the walk by the afternoon and began to wonder what in the world we would do with ourselves for the evening, beyond eating again. Being bored is not the right term for it. It’s more that we came to Venice with little agenda and with our budget not being enormous, were not in the mood for the museums or paying churches today, beyond our half-successful trip to St. Mark’s. It was at this point that our day took a turn for the more unique and even more satisfying. Hoping to catch a good shot of the Rialto bridge from further up the Grand Canal before finding a place to eat, we managed to find a short dock that protruded out into the Canal with Rialto on one side and a gorgeous panorama of north-west Venice on the other. After taking in the setting sun from our little haven, we noticed a bar behind us that seemed to be offering some good drink options. After Kris did some investigating, she found that the bar was also offering a cocktail hour buffet and for the price of only one drink a person, we could eat as much of the pasta and bruschetta as we wanted. This very much appealed to our backpacking senses and we jumped on it. 10 euros spent on some yummy wine and beer later, we had a very full and satisfied stomach and sat back out on “our” dock and listened to a full blown symphony entertain another restaurant across the Canal. It was a great night, and a terrific ending to our first day here. I managed to keep to under 200 pictures for the day and Kris managed to pass out within 5 minutes of getting back to the room.  She needs it and quite frankly, so do I. So I’ll end this blog. Right……now!

Pictures: Venice at sunset with the ever famous gondolas, St. Mark's Basilica, the many gorgeous back streets of Venice. It was hard to choose pictures for this blog. I will probably add more later when we have more internet access.