Oh boy, so I'm thinking that I have a new city that rivals with my Favorite Sevilla! We are in Venice right now, Katie has been talking this place up quite a bit for the past month and a half and I can now see why. I think that the element that interests me is that it IS so much like Sevilla, in the back narrow streets, the old buildings, the cobblestone roads (well, they are kind of immitation cobblestone roads,) but there are no streets, only rivers. It really is an amazing city. It's not noisy as a typical large city would be with cars and the typical bus traffic and horn hoking... because there is no automobile traffic, just water traffic that is limited to the canals. It is a pleasant city to get yourself lost in, which happens easily. Katie and I had just went out to go walking around and we decided to go back to the... hostel(?, we booked it on hostelworld, but it's really a bed and breakfast) to get ride of our coats and change to shorts and we turned one street before we were supossed to walked a few blocks and found out that we counldnt cross the canal, due to there being no bridge. I'll try and post a picture we took, trying to capture this moment... We have become quite skilled in arriving unknowingly at cities that are having public holiday parties by chance the same time we are in the city. Last night was 'festa del redentore' kickoff (that comment I made about the city being quite doesn't apply here,) a festival that celebrates the end of 16th century plague. Im pretty sure all 60,000 of the cities inhabitants and the extra...50,000 (or so tourists, Im not sure how many there are,) people were all in San Marcos square and on the walk on the front side of the island to watch the half-hour fireworks show at 11.30. It was the longest fireworks show of my life! It was nice though.
Yesterday we went to Murano, an island close to VEnice were the government moved all the glass blowing factories many years ago due to uncontrollable factory fires destroying parts of Venice years ago. The glasswork is famous through out the world, many beautiful pieces, all way to expensive and fragile for me to get involved. We also became regulars at a sidewalk cafe yesterday, having visited it more than once... haha. And we will possibly visit it again tonight we when we meet up with Matt Lilly, who just happened to be coming to Venice around the same time we were here (we stayed an extra day to pass time with him.) Matt is at the core of the 'Hack Across Europe.' Where as while we were in Spain (and portugal) in 2003 we made the joke that we would Hack across Europe... (this explains all the pictures of the Central High School hackey sack club to the right!)
We have had a great time here in Venice although we have spent much money and we will be sad to leave tomorrow. Country number 21 on The Great Spiral.
