Venice

Here's the busy area we arrived at in Venice.  The bridges over the Grand Canal, such as this one, were among the many attractive elements within the city's mystique.  Boats are a main form of transportation in Venice.  You might buy a pass to use the boats for an hour, or the whole day, much like a NYC Metrocard.  To the right, you see a little waiting area you step into which the boats pull alongside.

Here we are on the Grand Canal.

Sometimes the Grand Canal has a lot of boat traffic.

Lots of little nooks and crannies to row in and out of.

Buildings we floated past were adorned with opulent art.

Here's where we first approached St. Mark's Square.  In the center, you see the Doge's Palace, an architectural marvel and my favorite Italian building.

I didn't get a picture that did justice to the Doge's Palace, so I swiped this picture from Wikipedia.  You can go into the Doge's Palace and tour it.  It just gets more and more impressive.  There's a dungeon in there too.

St. Mark's Basilica is the most noticeable thing once you're actually IN St. Mark's Square.  Since I noticed it first, I took a picture of it first.

I next noticed the live entertainment at the restaurants.  These guys always have a large crowd and get applause day and night.  Usually the deserved it too.

St. Mark's Square is known for pigeons.  Pigeons think St. Mark's Square is known for tourists, but what do those bird brains know anyway?  Around the square, you can buy little kernels you can feed to the pigeons.  I saw people holding them in their hands.  Birds would hop on their arm and munch away.  At first I couldn't figure out how to get them to jump on my hand.  An Italian boy motioned for me to hold my hand more open.

A bird saw my food, hopped up, and befriended me.

Make no mistake about it.  This is still my arm.  It's just that it was overrun by a flock of pigeons, all interested in purchasing my food.  Pigeons are smart enough not to bite the hand that feeds them.  Squabble as they might, all I felt was the pitter-patter of pleasantly warm pigeon feet.

I ended up eventually having to shake them off.  This one hung on a bit longer to pose for the camera.

When I ran out of food, the pigeons thanked me, hopped away, and looked for more.  The mother in this picture is trying to get the pigeons to traumatize her little boy.  Pigeons are not that mean though, so they approach him slowly.

Here's a shot as we approach the Doge's Palace on foot.  There were little carts all over selling souvenirs, as seen on the right.

We of course weren't allowed to take pictures in the Doge's Palace, but I leaned out and took this shot of St. Mark's Basilica.

We actually were allowed to take pictures in the dungeon.  We weren't part of a tour, but we saw this group had a really good tour guide, so we stayed within earshot.

The jail cells in Venice are quite spacious and accomodating.  When Napolean stormed in and freed the inmates, there were only two prisoners.  The people of Venice, in a gross generalization, were relatively happy and fiercely protected their way of life -- until Napolean came along.

They had some of the preserved prison graffiti on display.

There was a part of the Doge's palace sporting all types of pillars.  This one had faces on it.

Murano, which we visited later, is an island known for its fancy colored glass creations.  Stores all over Italy, but especially in Venice, sold these creations for madly expensive prices.  I fawned over this glass eagle until I learned it had the MSRP of a Lexus.

Gondolas weaved around the canals of Venice.

Miller in front of the famous Rialto Bridge.  Little shops lead up and down this bridge, which is the oldest out of the Grand Canal bridges

Here's a view of some of the little shops as we go down the Rialto Bridge.

Here's an overhead shot of the Grand Canal from a bridge.

We bought tickets for a concert, Vivaldi's Four Seasons, currently being performed nightly in Venice.

Graffiti advertised an upcoming anti-Bush demonstration.

Now you might think this is an artifact of camera perspective but it's not.  We looked at this from every angle.  That tower in the middle was seriously leaning to the left.  This is Venice, not Pisa, so we were a bit concerned.  It stayed up long enough for us to finish our vacation.

This man couldn't afford an entire guitar, but that didn't get him down.

These guys made music with glasses and glass tubes.  If you've ever seen one of those "singing bowls", that's essentially what the guy on the left was doing.

Shadows of two mechanical men came to life rang the bell of the clock tower at St. Mark's Square every hour on the hour.

More scenes of valor sculpted in bronze.

We walked around Venice at night, trying to find the docks of the Venetian Arsenal, and were treated to more spectacular views along the way.

Apparently the military closed off the docks.

On the way back we saw buildings lit up along the sea.

St. Mark's Basilica at night.

See, those same entertainers are still fiddling away at night.

There was a Ferrari store near our hotel, so I took a picture of the big car in the window.

This picture alone made me want to take up sailing.  I'm keeping an eye out for a good sailing class.

You can see gondolas floating by.  As the man on standing on the right sings for the people on his gondola, other gondolas float alongside him, so their customers can enjoy the singing too.

Gondolas are well wrapped when not in use.  They must look fairly pristine to get tourists to pay their prices.

I took a picture of a nice lady's dog.

It was time for the concert.  No pictures allowed during the concert, so I took this one beforehand.  The chairs were weird.  Three of them were connected, so as one would lean back, the other two would be pushed forward.  Very annoying.  The concert was excellent though.  The Four Seasons is filled with melodies familiar to everyone.  Reading "Classical Music for Dummies" beforehand certainly gave me a deeper appreciation for it though.

A gondolier possibly done for the night.

There were steps everywhere simply leading down into the water.  I wouldn't really swim in that water though.

On the way out to the small islands in the Venetian Lagoon, Miller spotted this cruise ship, labeled "The World", docked at Venice.  The cabins on this ship are actually condos owned by permanent residents.  You don't have to stay on it of course, but you can.  It's a fully functioning community with a movie theater, restaurants, grocery store, deli, full tennis court, and even classes on things like dancing and language.  High speed internet access to every room too.  It just floats between interesting places all around the world.

Lighthouses are always good to take pictures of on the way to the islands.

We landed first on a quiet little island named Torcello.

After the downfall of the Roman Empire, this island was one of the first to be populated by those fleeing the mainland.

It wasn't hard to take good pictures here.  This idyllic island actually at one time had a population of 10,000 and was more powerful than Venice itself.  Now, due to past problems with navigation and malaria, it has a population of under 100.

Over this bridge, I could have sworn I saw a cat.

Here's a shot of the lawn of one of the few permanent Torcello residents.

Just in case there are any customs agents reading this, no officer, I did not touch any of these farm animals.

This goat, however, was on the wrong side of the fence.  It wasn't causing any trouble though.  It just saw the grass was always greener and did something about it.

Torcello has ducks too, like this one.

This cat seemed familiar.

The Venetian-Byzantine Torcello Cathedral, largely restored around the 10th century, was a prime attraction here.

Here was the other prime attraction.  A little museum.  We bought the audio tour for both.

Here's some artifacts on display outside the museum.

Here's a view inside the Cathedral.

This was the most prominent work of art in the Cathedral.  Note the Byzantine-style halos around some of the heads.  I'm sure you could have noted a lot more in a better picture.

There was a bell tower you could go up in for an overhead view of the island.

And other islands.  This one in particular had psychedelic pastel colors.

Here are the bells in the Torcello bell tower.

As we ate, we peeked under a chair and saw that same curious furball.  We figured we had to leave the island to escape from it, so we headed to Murano.

We reached Murano, the glass-making island.  The first, and only, glass-making factory we entered had flowery decoration at the entrance.

These guys, making their glass sculptures, were moving around too fast for a camera without a flash, but you can see what he's doing.  He's got some heated glass on a pole.  Not too complicated.  What happens next is ancient lore that only the workers of Murano know.

This large glass tree served as decoration in a piazza of Murano.  We visited a few glass-making shops before we left Murano, but I was mostly worried about breaking things.  Break anything on this island, and your children are not going to college.  We headed back for our last moments in Venice before flying out.

Here's another nice road along Venice.  One thing that I loved about Venice.  Nice elderly ladies would every so often pop their heads out of windows and I would wave at them.  They would happily wave back and carry on a one-sided conversation with me in Italian as I smiled stupidly and walked off.

One last view of St. Mark's Square at night before flying back home.

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