7 venice

Venice is exactly what I imagined it to be: a gorgeous city on water! This northern Italy city is one of the oldest and famous cities in Italy and I had the opportunity to visit this weekend. It was very beautiful but also really COLD!! Ha! I spent the whole weekend bundled up as we toured the city, so I didn't take as many photos as usual. Some of these I stole from Facebook... from a classmate who has a way better camera than mine. Anyway, enjoy the photos!

This cute little boat on the left is a "taxi" : since most of the main streets in venice are water, there are no cars, only boats. If you're going somewhere within the city, you walk! The photo on the right was my view from inside the "aquabus". This is the public transportation in Venice, which is widely used being that most of the people in Venice don't live there. The city itself only has about 60,000 residents, and not even all of them have boats. That means that all the tourists, which make up most of the daily traffic, plus those who don't own a boat are on these boats. If you get motion sickness, don't even think about going to Venice!! We spent half of the time there on boats... and there is no way of getting around it. The aquabus has to stop at every fermata or stop, and each time, the boat rocks back and forth as it quickly brakes and then has to be docked. I don't even really get motion sickness on boats usually and I was uncomfortable!




beautiful photos of the grand canal that I "borrowed"! ;)
It was very beautiful but almost surreal; the whole time feels like a theme park!
If you've ever been to the Venetian in Las Vegas,


Piazza San Marco. This is the heart of Venice!


The Basilica of San Marco in San Marco Piazza. This was one of the most ornate buildings I've seen in Italy. It's breathtaking up close.... but you can definitely tell its age! Click on the photo for a much bigger and clearer view!



A smaller piazza inbetween houses. Everything that you see is built on water...
They use stilts burried deep into the canal and layers of brick, concrete, etc...


The famous Venetian gondolas! I didn't ride in one because they were charging 150 euro for a 40 minute ride....


On the left, a view of a side street near my hotel...
Me on the balcony of our hotel room! If you look really closely, you can see the grand canal at the end of the street.


Our cute little hotel room and the lobby. We got complimentary room service on Sunday morning.. that was great!

Venice is known for Murano glass. (Murano is one of the islands surrounding the main island in the city.) These are just two of the many photos I took of the amazing glasswork... all that you see is glass!! The chandeliers, sculptures, all of it!

And of course, just like the rest of the big cities in Italy, there are all the high end brand stores.
I saw these gorgeous shoes in the Valentino window... bet you can't guess how much they were! I didn't buy anything for myself in Venice but I did get a few small presents for the fam.

Venice was truly a one of a kind city! If you ever come to Italy, I definitely would suggest you visit. This was my last overnight trip out of Florence! I may make a day trip to Pisa this weekend, but my time is running out here... only 25 days left!
Hope you enjoyed the pics. Ciao! ;)