I've got this...I'm a gondola man and I've got guns...VENICE!!

Sorry it took so long to get this post up, enjoy!!!


Two weekends ago, I went to Venice with my roommate Maria and it was spectacular.  For the first time since I've been here, I literally stepped out of the train station and felt like I was somewhere iconic.  Not that every single city I've been to hasn't been beautiful don't get me wrong, but there's just something about Venice that captures you the minute you set foot into the City of Rivers.  I had heard from many people that when you go to Venice, you either love it or you hate it.  You love it because it's beautiful or you hate it because it's depressing (the whole city is sinking into the ocean thing).  And while I tried to look at Venice from both point of views, it was overwhelming leaning towards the beautiful side, it truly is a one of a kind city.  A beautiful disaster.  :)


The weekend of magic started not so magically when we arrived to find that it was raining!! Both of us were equally unprepared (well that's technically true because Maria was smart enough to bring an umbrella!) and headed to the nearest gift shop in the train station to buy something that we assumed would resemble a poncho.  Luckily we found these plastic button up coat thingys that weren't all the horrible looking.  When we finally got out of the train station and got over our first sights of Venice, we found out hostel (only five minutes away!!) and then set out to enjoy the city in the rain!!

We decided to take the Number 1 Waterbus down the Grand Canal so that we could get off at all the main museums and churches that we wanted to see.  After taking a million pictures of the Grand Canal we stopped at the Galleria Dell'Accademia to see the gallery, walked a bit over to the Peggy Guggenheim gallery/sculpture garden, stopped at a really odd Chinese Futuristic Gallery (it was free) before making our way to this huge church right before we got back on the Waterbus...at this point the sun was finally coming out!!! But it was soooo windy.  I'd have to say that of the three galleries I think I enjoyed the Peggy Guggenheim one the most, a lot of the artwork was her personal collection from when she lived in the palace in Venice.  Obviously they've added in some new installations since then but I still have to say that Peggy definitely had good taste in art, I love her style! 

After we got back on the bus, the next stop was Piazza San Marco! The largest square in Venice and definitely a Venetian Icon.  However, before we could even properly enter the square, we were greeted by whom?? Asians and pigeons!! They pretty much were right in the middle of everything and before we could even start to realize that we were about to play with pigeons, Maria and I had pigeon food (disguised as Fruit Loops haha) shoved in our hands and were feeding the birds! It was so much fun haha, gotta hand it to those Asians, they know how to have a good time! haha

After that we headed into the square and decided to go into the Basilica before it closed.  It was free to get in and of course it was beautiful.  The Basilica San Marco is a mosaic church (basically meaning that all the walls and ceilings are done in mosaics of biblical scenes and people) and while it was my second one of this semester I wasn't as in awe as I was in Sicily, but it was still definitely a sight to behold.  I think that mosaic churches are quickly becoming my favorite type of church to go visit.  Luckily it was free to get in, but there were a couple of different parts that you could pay to go see.  Maria and I decided to spring for the 5 euro to go to the second floor balcony so we could have a look out over Piazza San Marco for some good picture opportunities.  It was definitely worth it! Not only did we get the view but there was also a museum on the second floor that told us a little bit more about how mosaics are made and gave us a great view of the original four horses that looked out over the Piazza for over 300 years.  


Soon enough, Maria and I realized that we were unfortunately about to be out of money, so we headed off to the bancomat and then grabbed a quick bite at a restaurant right near the Piazza, in retrospect, probably a mistake since I definitely got ripped off for my half a bottle of wine.   Since it was around 5 then, we decided to head back to the hostel and get situated in our room before heading out for a late dinner and drinks in the college region of Venice.  That night, we headed out with a couple of Canadian guys we met at the hostel and wandered around the beautiful streets of Venice (almost got lost haha) but eventually made it back to the hostel after enjoying a view of the city at night! 

The next day Maria and I started early and got a gondola ride on the Grand Canal!! I've heard you can't go to Venice without doing one and since we couldn't afford a 40 minute gondola ride with just the two of us (80 euro!) we decided to take the economical approach and joined 12 other tourists on the 30 second gondola ride (50 cents! haha).  We decided that men who row gondolas probably have the best guns in Italy because it looks so hard to do!! (where the title of the blog came from haha). The gondola took us straight to the Rialto Fish market where we looked around a bit before taking a walk over the Rialto Bridge, where we each got a real Venetian mask (Venice is famous for it's masks because of the Carnivale festival that's held there every February).

Then we headed out to the Glass island of Murano where we looked around at a bunch of the glass shops before heading over to the glass museum and a real glass blowing demonstration.  The museum was really neat, it showed the progression of glass styles throughout the centuries and had some incredible pieces.  It could only be topped by the demonstration! It took the glass master about a 90 seconds to make a small vase and about three minutes to make a small glass horse, it was so cool! We found out that the keep the furnace at about 3000 degrees and that after the pieces are finished the have to sit in a different furnace that is kept at a lower temperature so that when the glass is bought, it's not as easy to break.  We also learned that there a few different ways to spot real Murano glass as opposed to fake glass that is meant to be sold to tourists:
1) If there are only three colors or so of an item, it's probably fake.  Most Murano glass pieces are made with a bunch of different colors.
2) If all the pieces look exactly the same, it's not real.
3) If the price is too cheap, it's not real.

Since we still had about 6 hours until our train that night, we decided to take the water bus over to the Burano  Island that is known for it's lace.  What we also didn't realize is that Burano is the island of colors! Every single one of the buildings was painted a different color, it was so beautiful.  Again, there were a bunch of shops that could potentially have fake lace in the, but we ended up finding one that had a lacemaker making lace right in the shop, so we ended up having a look around there, and even though I had bought a lot of souvenirs on the glass island, I ended up getting a scarf anyways because it was so cute! 

The waterbus ride back to the main island was really long, but eventually we made it and ended up taking a couple of pics with our masks on over the Grand Canal right before we caught out train back to Florence.  It was an amazing two days, honestly Venice is such a dream city, I definitely would love to go back someday!