As you may or may not know, I am perilously close to finishing my doctorate. Perilously because, as excited as I am to finish, it means that I am about to close one chapter in my life and face the whole rest of the unwritten novel. Which is daunting. But its also worthy of celebration. And because I have the single greatest best friend in the whole world, she decided to get married just when I was finishing and to do it in style in Italy. Was that really for me? No, not at all, but still... great friend. So here I am. Celebrating two wondrous events with a two week vacation through Italy. And because my mother likes adventure and "wants to see Venice before [she] turns 66", she is adventuring with me. But today it was just me.
I have to admit I was a little lame today. I flew into Milan and then hopped a shuttle bus and a train to get to Venice. While I am glad that I came first to Venice, I was too tired to try to take pictures of anything and when I got here, I crashed. I am so envious of people that can survive on four hours of sleep. That is not me. I need eight. Or at least six. And when you are flying, even when you luck out and score the only seat on the plane without a neighbor and "sprawl" out on the luxuriousness of two seats, garnering mad-dog envy stares from everyone else around you, well, newflash, you still dont sleep that well. So when I got into Venice, I just crashed. I mean, I took the public boat through the grand canal and wandered the streets for a while trying to find my hotel, but THEN I crashed. I woke up in time to wander the streets at nightfall though and here are some of the photos I took.
Venice is a different city at night. During the day, there are people EVERYWHERE. Although as the waiter at the restaurant I ate tonight said, its nothing compared to high season. I shudder. But at night, its quiet. The streets are empty, even the piazzas. And its beautiful. Venice is beautiful in the day too, at least from what I could see on the public taxi sitting next to the Spanish couple that argued for twenty minutes with the ticket collector about whether or not they should have to pay a fine for not purchasing the correct ticket (at least I think that is what they were arguing about since the ticket collector was arguing in Italian and the Spanish couple in Spanish and I was just trying to stare uncomfortably anywhere else because I was stuck right in the middle). But what I could see was lovely. It truly is a marvel of engineering. You dont even realize that you are literally walking on water until all of a sudden the street you are on dead-ends into an alley of water.
Anyway, once I woke up, I took some pictures of Venice at night and here they are. For those of you who might come in the future, follow Rick Steve's advice and take a break during part of one day, take a rest, and wander at night. Totally worth it. Plus you get to sleep. Aces...
I have to admit I was a little lame today. I flew into Milan and then hopped a shuttle bus and a train to get to Venice. While I am glad that I came first to Venice, I was too tired to try to take pictures of anything and when I got here, I crashed. I am so envious of people that can survive on four hours of sleep. That is not me. I need eight. Or at least six. And when you are flying, even when you luck out and score the only seat on the plane without a neighbor and "sprawl" out on the luxuriousness of two seats, garnering mad-dog envy stares from everyone else around you, well, newflash, you still dont sleep that well. So when I got into Venice, I just crashed. I mean, I took the public boat through the grand canal and wandered the streets for a while trying to find my hotel, but THEN I crashed. I woke up in time to wander the streets at nightfall though and here are some of the photos I took.
Venice is a different city at night. During the day, there are people EVERYWHERE. Although as the waiter at the restaurant I ate tonight said, its nothing compared to high season. I shudder. But at night, its quiet. The streets are empty, even the piazzas. And its beautiful. Venice is beautiful in the day too, at least from what I could see on the public taxi sitting next to the Spanish couple that argued for twenty minutes with the ticket collector about whether or not they should have to pay a fine for not purchasing the correct ticket (at least I think that is what they were arguing about since the ticket collector was arguing in Italian and the Spanish couple in Spanish and I was just trying to stare uncomfortably anywhere else because I was stuck right in the middle). But what I could see was lovely. It truly is a marvel of engineering. You dont even realize that you are literally walking on water until all of a sudden the street you are on dead-ends into an alley of water.
Anyway, once I woke up, I took some pictures of Venice at night and here they are. For those of you who might come in the future, follow Rick Steve's advice and take a break during part of one day, take a rest, and wander at night. Totally worth it. Plus you get to sleep. Aces...
