Venice - May 2019

As mentioned in the Rome - May 2019 blog entry linked, I started the trip in Rome while my mom worked. We took the fast train to Venice from Friday through Sunday of that trip.

We did many of the classic Venice things - St. Mark's Square by the Doge Palace, the Bridge of Sighs, Rialto Bridge, a gondola ride, and a trip to the gorgeous and colorful Burano Island. There was a special exhibit during this time that we visited at Accademia Gallery of art from da Vinci, specifically displaying the Vetruvian Man (which is generally kept in safe, airtight storage to protect it). I don't have any good photos of this, as photography was not allowed - I think I got one furtive cell phone photo from a side room, but it was definitely not good quality and definitely not permitted. However, it was incredible to spend a long amount of time looking at this tiny masterpiece - similar to the Mona Lisa, it really isn't much larger than an 8.5x11 piece of copy paper.

Here are a very few photos from the few days:

St. Mark's Square, looking at the Doge's Palace. Cafe Florian is off to left, where one of the resident pigeons swooped in and stole a nearby tourist's sandwich out of his hand.

Probably everyone who rides a gondola gets this photo. One of my favorite thing about Venice is the crazy shapes used for window and doors.

Top of the Doge's Palace. I'm not sure what the ball-berry-knob shapes symbolize, but I love them aesthetically.

The Doge's Palace really is ostentatious and beautiful, but we did not stand in that line for it. We instead hopped a vaporetto (Venice water bus) to Burano.

You may or may not be able to tell from these photos that it poured the whole time we were in Venice. I don't know if it was the rain, some people-ing issues on my part, or the fact that it's sinking due to cruise ships, but Venice sort of just made me sad. It's pretty, but I don't know that I've got much of a desire to go back again - not my favorite European city.