Venezia, La citta su acqua

This past weekend I went to Venice with a group of 8 fellow students from my program.  We left Arezzo on a train around noon Saturday, got to Venice around 3:30pm and left at 6:30 the next day to get back to Arezzo for school the next day.

 

photo from a friends Facebook page 

 

Venice is on of the few cities I've been to where it's beautiful as soon as you step out of the train station.

 

 

Our first mission, after we got off the train was to find some lunch, which was a lot hard than it sounds because many places were closed for the afternoon but we ended up finding a nice place to have some pizza. We didn't try this "American" pizza with eggs and bacon but the pepperoni pizza I had was very good.

 

 

After lunch we made our way to Piazza San Marco. It was a pretty long walk but there was so much to see along the way, it wasn't too bad.

 

Rialto Bridge

Carnivale masks in progress

 

Piazza San Marco is a huge plaza with many important things all clumped together. There is the San Marco Basilica.  Unfortunately we never got to go in due to our timing.

 

 

One of my favorite sites of the trip was the Piazza San Marco clock tower.  It has balls that move to show the phases of the moon and it is rung by mechanical statues.

 

 

While at Piazza San Marco, we took an elevator to the top of another tower to get some great views of the city.

 

 

Right around the corner was the Bridge of Sighs which use to be used to transport prisoners from the prison to the execution spot.

 

After that we walked back to the train station to catch a shuttle bus to our hostel. The next day we took a water taxi to the island of Murano.  They have been blowing glass on this island for over 700 years.  I did buy some of the glass but most of what I bought was gifts so I won't show you much.  I'll will show you this bracelet I bought though.

 

The owner of the store I went to made everything himself. We walked through this island for most of the day.  It was much more relaxing than Venice because not many tourist were there.

Friends Facebook photo

 

 

After we got done at Murano we tried to go back to San Marco to go inside but there was a really long line of people waiting to get in and no one really wanted to wait so we walked back to the train station and had lunch on the Grand Canal.

 

 

It was a great trip.  Our next trip is with the school.  We are heading to Florence this Saturday.