Celebration of Life Tour
Venice, Italy
Venice is a challenge. It has all the features of the standard medieval city - narrow haphazardly oriented streets, tall buildings, uneven surfaces, with some important exceptions. Instead of city walls there are canals. The buildings are even taller than most old cities we visited on this trip. And, most importantly, Venice is comparatively HUGE. The city is made up of multiple islands. The grand canal is wide and only crossed by three widely spaced bridges. Streets dead end at canals without bridges, so you backtrack to find a bridge. We found a GPS to be essential for finding our way around independently.
So, where to start? We spent two full days in Venice. Our introduction was, as for most I'm sure, Piazza San Marco. This giant square is surrounded by museums, famous and important buildings, and restaurants with live music. And people. Lots of people. It's a little bit of chaos everywhere you go.
Of course, the traditional thing to do is to take a ride in a gondola, check. Correr Museum, check. The Doge Palace, check. View the city from the top of the Campanile, check.
Then, we visited a couple of the surrounding islands. First, Murano with its many glass factories, and glass museums. There are some astonishing glass collections out there, and the town itself is quite charming. Burano is even smaller - on a scale that makes you think you might be in a theme park. Burano is known for the production of fine lace, and sports its own leaning tower.
Speaking of leaning towers, looking around you might surmise that every Italian town is required to have a leaning tower of its own. They're all over the place.
All aboard for Berlin
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