Venice...

     I had intended to do an "Italy" blog, but it's turning into more than one... I guess that's good, although it's taking a good long while. ;P

     As I mentioned before, Michael and I went straight back to Venice after our time in Milan. We caught our train without too much trouble (they're big and fast, but we managed it), and a few hours later we were buying breakfast in Venice and finding ourselves a map. Milan had been a really fantastic treat mostly because of the wonderful people who we got to meet and who showed us around, while I think Venice wins for the most interesting/beautiful city (when one is left to explore on his own).

A man delivering supplies brought by
boat to one of the many shops hidden
among the streets.

     Our airbnb host had told us we'd have to get a water bus to get to where we could walk to our place. There are bus sized boats that are constantly going around on the main canal through Venice, and besides all the little private boats on all the smaller canals, those buses are the way to get around. We got on one and rode it through the city and around outside it, getting a beautiful view from the water, and made it safely to where we needed to go. We were on the south eastern part of the city, in an airbnb a few stories up in one of the old, tall buildings that make up the city. It is always so neat to get to stay, instead of in a hotel or main touristy area, right in the middle of the city just as if we lived there with the locals! Our airbnb had a nice, tiny balcony that opened out between buildings away from the street, over some little back yards and gardens, and we enjoyed being able to make and eat meals there at the airbnb, as well as finding some restaurants over the course of the few days.
   

 We had bought a little paper map for two euro, which proved invaluable for our time there. We used my phone navigation a few times, when searching for a market for example, but usually we just followed our detailed map and found what we were looking for! Like I said, we didn't have a guide or know much about the city, but it was beautiful and interesting enough that we simply enjoyed exploring the streets and seeing all the boats and canals and buildings. The buildings are closely packed and very tall, and the streets are often nothing more than a little alleyway, sometimes not even wide enough for two people, and often only a few meters long. Yet each of those tiny streets was on our map and had a name, usually posted on an old sign on the buildings, so it was a bit like exploring a maze.

This particular part of the maze looked pretty
ominous to us, though...

        We spent quite a bit of time exploring without going anyplace specific. It was fun because was hard to have two people constantly both completely aware of each tiny street we're on and which direction we're heading, since the streets are so short lived and weirdly oriented, and there's only one map with very tiny letters for very tiny streets... so Michael did the navigating (I did help sometimes) and I got to follow him and watch him walk around with his nose buried in the paper, rejoicing whenever the tiny words matched up with the street hiding behind some random wall, and also help keep him from walking into canals that pop out of nowhere when we accidentally ran into a dead end.

There were churches everywhere, so we'd often stop and go inside to pray a rosary, warm up and look around. Sometimes they were charging for entrance, but they would let us in for free to a certain designated spot so we could pray our rosary. One evening we had planned to go to Mass at a church where we saw the schedule on the door. Unfortunately we had gotten some of the information wrong, so when we got there it was locked and dark. We looked up any other Masses nearby, and found one somewhere across the maze of dark streets, about a 20 minute walk away (if we didn't get lost.) We had about 20 minutes till Mass started, so we set out, and made it just in time.  I forget the name of the church, but it was so nice to find it and get to go to a small, Italian Mass at a side alter of a beautiful church we wouldn't have ever seen otherwise. After Mass that night we found a restaurant and had a nice pasta dinner.
     We found a market hidden among the buildings on the first day there, I think, and we went there a couple times and enjoyed making some of our own meals. It was a bit hard to find at first; my phone (which is what supposedly knew where we could find the market) had a bit of trouble noticing that two meters of water between us and where we wanted to go might be an obstacle. But we used our handy little brains and our handy little map and some handy little bridges and eventually found it.
     The second day there we went for a run in the morning (it was pretty cold!), and then walked along the street next to our airbnb and perpendicular to the main walkway where you can catch the water bus. There were lots of bakeries and markets, and people were selling a lot of veggies or freshly caught, weird looking fish and crabs and such. After that we made breakfast and ate it on our balcony, and in the process accidentally spilled a bucket of laundry water down onto whatever was below us... There were little ropes and pulley systems outside the windows where people hung out their laundry. Wherever you look there were clothes and sheets blowing in the (freezing) wind, I found it hard to believe they would dry, it seemed more like the water in them would just freeze...But everybody did it and was sort of a happy sight. :)

     There were lots of shops around, plenty of masks and neat crafty things and beautiful (and weird sometimes) postcards. We went into a neat little shop where a man made a bunch of leather bound journals painted with Venetian city scenes, leather bookmarks and neat wooden pens, and we got a few things there. I wonder what it would be like to own an entire shop of really useful and beautiful things you'd made yourself.
     We also got to spend quite a bit of time reading and not freezing, Michael had read a book called "Gunnar's Daughter" at TAC and really enjoyed it, so we read quite a bit of that. It's about people in Norway and Iceland, and there are lots of intense parts describing characters out in the snow and such... it's a different thing to read that sort of thing now that I haven't only lived in sunny California. You realize that "being cold" isn't just a slightly uncomfortable thing you can make go away by putting on a sweater. :P

     We walked in St. Mark's square, by the huge, beautiful and famous cathedral, but didn't go inside. Rosie, Rachel, Mom and Dad went to Venice after Michael and I were back in Trumau, and they said that St. Mark's was probably the most impressive church they'd been in yet. They said that the entrance was filled with water, though, because apparently the city is sinking and it was in the middle of winter time (rain and snow and such). People buy special rain boots and walk on raised walkways that go over the flooded places. We would have had to wait in a line for a very long time though, and we enjoyed all our random little churches scattered throughout the city. But I hope I can see it sometime.
     One evening we were walking through the square and a "friendly" man came and gave me three roses "for free" "just for you" "for a happy new year..." and we tried to say thanks but no thanks, aware of the fact that he would just ask for money in a second and we weren't inclined to buy roses, but he convinced us (they're awfully good at that...), and as we walked away from our "new friend" who had made an exception "just for us," he of course managed to wheedle some money out of us, get offended that we didn't give him enough, and ask for two roses back. I had been specifically warned by somebody to simply not fall for those sellers' convincing offers...But they are good at what they do. We learned, and were on our guard after that. At one point I was saying something to Michael while we walked, and as I tried to illustrate something I put my hand out and suddenly there was a rose between my forefinger and thumb. I quickly pulled my hand back and we left the disappointed seller as quickly as we could without engaging in conversation. ;)

     After we were there for a few days, we went to meet Mom, Dad, Rosie and Rachel who were driving from Trumau on the way to Rome. We were initially going to ferry across the water from Venice to the mainland of Italy, but they ended up driving over to pick us up (you can't drive in Venice, but you can drive across the bridge that the train comes over on). We had quite the adventure trying to meet them, since we had to catch the water bus again and got thoroughly confused about the routes, ended up getting on the wrong one which took us in the other direction, away from Venice and across the water to the island of Murano. Eventually we made it though, and found ourselves waiting with a bunch of buses to meet the others as they drove in. We told Dad to meet us "by the happy guy singing songs and hitting himself with empty water bottles," since there was a man standing near us, with a huge, happy smile, banging things with water bottles for accompaniment and singing songs like "I'm a barbie girl." They drove in, spotted the landmark, and we got in and headed to Rome!

Here's the link to more pictures:  https://goo.gl/photos/c5S4h2PYTdTeGLVw9