Venice

This week was nice, but kind of weird since it was Holy Week, and Rome seems to be swamped with people. So to get away, on Thursday morning I went to Venice for a couple of days. Venice is a little over a 4-hour train ride from Rome via the Eurostar trains, which are very nice and very high speed trains. I left Rome at 6:50 in the morning, arriving in Venice at about 11:10. Thursday was beautiful, and was really the perfect day to just walk around the city and explore. I first went to my hotel, which was very nice, situated about 5 minutes away from San Marco, which made getting places very easy. I went to San Marco and explored the square and the shops, as well as the Basilica. The basilica is beautiful, and although it's smaller inside than one would imagine, the decoration of gold everywhere makes it stunning. I explored a little more in that area, and ended up going to grab some lunch. I caught one of the waterbuses right after lunch, and took it up to the Academia bridge. The Academia area was beautiful, and since it was not nearly as crowded, I spent some time up on top of the bridge overlooking the Grand Canal and thinking about how amazing Venice really is. What surprised me while I was up there was really something that I had never thought about, and that was that since the city has no roads for cars, everything has to be on boats. Now I know this seems obvious, but it's very weird (for me at least) to see an ambulance, polizia, DHL, and Telecom Italia boat instead of cars or trucks, but it's just the way it is there. I walked around a little more, and eventually found myself at the Rialto Bridge. The bridge reminded me a lot of the Ponte Veccio in Florence since it had so many little shops on it and in the surrounding area. The only difference was that rather than having leather goods and gold, this one was covered with things made out of Murano Glass. The bridge and the surrounding Rialto Market was a lot of fun to walk around, and reminded me a lot of the open air markets here in Rome. I walked around a little more and found myself back at my Hotel. I found a nice place to go to dinner, although found that what everyone says about the food in Venice was true, and that the food is nothing like real Italian food. It very much caters to the enormous amount of tourists that the city gets. After dinner I was pretty tired from a long day, and went back to my Hotel to relax for the rest of the night.
On Friday morning I got out early to explore before going back to Rome. I went back to San Marco to go to the top of the bell tower which is the tallest point in the city. The views from the top are spectacular, but unfortunately you can't see all of the little canals that weave through the city from the angle that the tower is at. I walked through the city to see everything one last time, and ended up spending some extra time at the Rialto Market since the food looked amazing this time around. As I was walking back the city was putting up raised pieces of wood on all of the sidewalks and buildings since the city (just like the rest of Italy) was expected to get rain from Friday afternoon until the following Wednesday, meaning that the city would be flooding. The raised pieces of wood act as makeshift sidewalks and walkways during the flooding, which seems like it would cause problems, but the people in Venice are very used to this, as it happens regularly. I took the 1 o'clock train back to a very rainy Rome Friday afternoon, and got back in Rome around 5 o'clock since we got delayed due to a stalled train in front of us.
Tomorrow is Easter, and myself and another friend of mine are making dinner for about 9 of us. She's making the meat and dessert, while I'm making some stuffed artichokes and soup. We're all looking forward to a relaxing weekend, since we don't have class on Monday either. I hope everyone is doing well back in the states, and continue to keep in touch. Buona Pasqua!

~Mike