Hot Day in a Floating City

Happy Birthday Dr. Speck! We woke up insanely early this morning in order to get some good time in Venice. It was about a 5 hour bus ride to Venice but most of us slept the whole time. We got to Venice around 11am and had a quick lunch before jumping on a ferry over to the actual city.

We were really overwhelmed by the heat, we had not really dealt with heat at all during the trip so it was especially tough to deal with. We took a walking tour of the city led by a tour guide which was interesting. We stuck to the back streets to keep in the shade and avoid crowds and got to see how real Venetians lived. We also got to see the church where Vivaldi was baptized, I get real excited to see places like that, where famous composers had once been. We then went to St. Marks Cathedral where other composers like Monteverdi and Gabrielli had once performed, very cool. The Cathedral itself was so great, very dark and had these amazing mosaics that looked like paintings they were so good. Even the floors were covered with mosaics, our guide says the church floods several times a year, even just a few days ago. I can’t believe it was still in that good of shape after all that abuse.

The church where Vivaldi was baptized

St. Mark's Cathedral

We ended our tour at the Murano glass factory, which I guess is a big deal even though I had never heard of it before. We got to see one of the master glass blowers create a vase (which he proceeded to destroy when we left) and also saw their showroom. The glass was beautiful but expensive, as you can imagine.

a canal with a gondola

We spent the rest of the afternoon wandering the streets of Venice, eating some pizza and of course having gelato. The architecture was beautiful throughout the city and it was always mind boggling to thing that we were standing on stilts and this whole city was floating, it is a shame that it is also slowly sinking. I really liked Venice, although it did sort of smell like urine at times and there were a ton of people in a small amount of space. It was definitely nice to get back to our small, open Austrian town.

some canal boats lined up along the water

leaving Venice, neat sky!

Tomorrow we’re finally off to Germany, my most anticipated part of the trip. I have always wanted to go to Germany. On our way to Rothenburg we’re going to stop at Dachau, that will be interesting to see for sure.