TOP: Traffic jam on a Venice waterway
2nd: A "street" in Venice...usually filled with hundreds of walkers
3rd: The main fish market...packed all day long
4th: Gary just lion around...ha, ha.
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We arrived in Venice starting to worry if Italy was overhyped as a tourist destination. Venice rectified that immediately. Venice is an incredible city; there are no vehicles allowed in the city...no cars, no trucks, no scooters, no motorcycles, and even no bicycles. I don't think hamsters even get a wheel. Everything moves either by foot (on land) or boat (on water). And make sure you don't confuse the two.
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We exited the train at Venice station, and the first thing you notice are the smells...smells of every kind, bread, cookies, garlic, and many others. The most cosmopolitan smell place I've ever been. Because of the absence of internal combustion engines, you actually can hear and smell "the city"...and it's magnificent.
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The city itself is set on an island, surrounded by a lagoon with numerous barrier islands. Within the main island is the "Grand Canal", and from there are interwoven scores of smaller canals. Large "water taxis" motor the Grand Canal, and smaller boats ply the smaller canals. In an interesting twist, the "front doors" of most houses and palaces are actually on the water side, usually tied directly into a boat dock.
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Finally a true "pedestrian city". We walked the streets for about 10 hours the first day, taking it all in. That evening we bedded down, with high expectations for tomorrow's walkabout.
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That serenity was shattered at 6am when the, oh, 400 churches all begin chiming their bells in their "call to mass". Bells after bells after bells...it went on for about 30 minutes, from every direction, in every tone, and at every volume level. Well, we were awake, so we got dressed and headed out. While we're dressing, a really loud alarm goes off, for about 3 minutes. Now, where we've lived, a really loud alarm means either (a) a tornado is inbound (Cincinnati), (b) the local nuke plant has melted down (Rochester), (c) earthquake (San Diego), or (d) the Sox won the world championship again (Boston). We had no clue what this siren was for, but it was probably important. I ran down to the main lobby, asked what was going on, and got "It's a test for when we have high water". So, they have to test this 200db siren at 6:15am on a weekday, IN CASE THEY HAVE HIGH WATER. Oh man, what moron thought this one up... probably some civil service worker.
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Anyhow, we're awake so we headed out for another day of walking..and walking...and walking. We did about 12 hours today, making the far end of the island, the residential district, the (original) jewish ghetto, and the fish market. Nothing Kathy likes better than a fish market, what with it's smooth smells and aura of cleanliness. And this one was a beaut....fish heads everywhere that you trudged through, All manner of marine creatures, with arms, legs, fins, gills, and blank stares (because they're all dead). I may never get the smell of that fish market out of my head.
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Venice was also where we started to experience one of the negatives of Italy, the pervasive rudeness. They (not just Italians, but all the tourists also) push, shove, cut queues, cell phone everywhere, and generally have a very different rude tolerance than we do in the US. In one memorable episode, kathy was buying stamps at the post office window. A woman cut the line, came up to the window, and physically pushed her aside, to get her stamps. Screw everyone else. Then, while everyone in queue was yelling at her, she basically chinned them off, like it was their fault. Rude, rude, rude. And, it was everywhere.
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But, all in all, Venice was truly world class, a very unique city, and one that I would return to in a heartbeat. It would just be more magnificent without all those pesky people there!
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Gondola Lumpy out
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