Well here we are in beautiful Venice, Italy and everything is tutto bene (all good)! We found a little Internet cafe on the way to the train station this morning so I only have a few minutes to give you all a quick update.
Lets see, where did we leave off...
Ahh yes, we were in Bolzano on our unexpected stop. By the way, Eric says he was under the influence of Tylenol PM when he wrote the last section of the blog post and apologizes for any confusion that may have occurred as a result. We did not assault a random Italian woman named Julliet, but rather touched the breast of the bronze statue of Julliet (as in Romeo and Julliet) which is supposed to bring one good fortune in love. But I digress...
We finally made it to Castellerotto in the Dolomites of northern Italy. This region is unlike anything we have seen thus far. I did not realize that we would be visiting a different country on this visit. Let me clarify, we did not actually leave Italy, but it felt like we did. German was the language of choice and the Austrian influence was unmistakable. It was like we were in an entirely different world. English was spoken more often than Italian and that was not very often. Anyway, we spent most of the following day hiking in a region called Alpe de Suisi. It is absolutely beautiful. We did about a 6 hour hike to the top of Mount Schlern (look up a few pics on Google, its amazing).
The next morning (Monday), we parted ways with Castellerotto and made our way towards Venice. Venice is breathtaking. We had all seen pictures before, but actually seeing it in person was surreal. It took a little while to accept that we were actually there. We took a water taxi down the Grand Canal to our hotel near Piazza di San Marco and marveled at the beautiful architecture and brilliant colors of the buildings lining the canal. We had a quick bite to eat and then headed out to catch a couple of museums (Chiesa di Frari and Scuola di Rocco). Both were equally impressive with massive frescoes by masters including Dante, Titian (Titian, The Venetian, as we like to call him), Tintoretto and others. We ended our sightseeing early so that we could partake in a Venetian Pub Crawl. We visited several side street trattorias and sample the house wine as well as plates of mixed antipasti. We ended the night watching the battle of the bands on St. Marks Square with, of course, gelato in hand.
The next day (Tuesday), was our heavy sightseeing day. We started out with the Piazzale Ducale or the Palace of the Doge. It was a massive building detailing the art and history of Venice's golden age, when it was ruled by a Duke (Doge). We saw his living quarters, beautiful courtyard, the armory and the prison to name few. Next was the Mueso Correr, full of art and archaeological remains from all of Venetian history. We took a short break for lunch and then headed to St. Marks Basilica. Massive and rendered in a Byzantine style, it was dark but beautiful with lots of ornate and intricate details.
I'm running out of time and Matt the travel director is telling me to wrap it up. We had a contest on the Rialto bridge to see who could get the most people to wave to them from passing boats, took an awesome gondola ride (we couldn't find any bellas to join us), climbed the bell tower in St. Marks at dusk, had a wonderful dinner on the grand canal and finished the day with, of course, gelato.
We are headed to Florence right now, so I'm sure we will have lots of great stories to tell in a couple days.
Love and miss you all!
Ciao!
EJM
