Retrospective - Venice!

Midterms all done!! It was much more stressful than I would have liked but I'm definitely happy with the way everything went. It's time to do some catching up - Venice, a combined post on the cooking class and opera, and Canonizations 2012 :)

Venice is up first! This was the class-wide weekend trip we took from the morning of Oct. 6th - 7th. One of the best things about this particular trip, besides the city itself, was the fact that we got a TON of free time to walk around and explore by ourselves, as well as a few suggestions for things to do. More on that in a sec, but as for the city itself - Venice is on the Northeast side of Italy and is made up of over 100 small islands connected by bridges. There are no cars to be found, and all the streets are only just wide enough for pedestrians. Boats serve as their cars/taxis/ambulances (no joke), and their public transportation is a system of barges that work just as our metro/subways do - just as crowded as well. But it was effective - we quickly got to the Basilica of San Marco then we were released until dinner. My little group went around to do as much window shopping as we could in the time we had.

two taxis - pic taken from the back of the metro barge

an ambulance...i wasn't kidding :)

a typical window

The second day we visited the Doge's Palace to witness some cool Gothic style apartments, then spent the day in Murano - one of the islands close by Venice which is VERY famous for it's glasswork. We got to see glass being made from molten stage to a vase, then a horse, a process which took all of 5 minutes if not less. Soo cool :)

Looking out of Murano