Venezia aka Venice

I successfully made it through my night-train with the cabin full of people that I couldn't understand, got to the beautiful city of Venice, took a bus-type-boat to a certain area and met up with Mom after about an hour of waiting. Hooray!

Venice is exactly what I imagined. It's breathtaking. Amazingly, peeling paint and algae water make for beautiful beautiful scenery. Ahhh.

After checking into our hotel, we walked around, took the bus/boat to the glass-blowing island of Murano and looked around, and did some more walking around. We ate lunch at this fancy cafe right next to the water's edge. I am being so spoiled.

This is Rialto Bridge, and on Saturdays there's a huge market (well I think it's just on Saturdays, I'm not really sure)

This is a church where St. Mark (???) is buried

This is on Murano, the glass-blowing island.  Really the only difference I noticed is that it's a lot less crowded than the actual big island is.

Probably my favorite part of today was our gondola ride. We went at twilight, and I know I'm overusing the word, but it was beautiful.

This is our Gondolier: he was so funny because #1- usually the Gondolier's are young, suave Italian men, #2- he didn't really seem to know much English, so instead of telling us what we were seeing, he just kept mumbling and grumbling.  It was funny.  #3- right after this picture he gave me a kiss on the cheek!

We finished off the day with a chocolate and banana crepe. What a perfect day.