Beautiful Day. Beautiful People. Beautiful Moments in Nashville.
Unfortunately where we stayed in Venice did not have wifi so I was not able to update the blog daily which was unfortunate because it ended up being one of my favorite places that we went to on the trip. The city is just so different than really any other on the planet that one cannot help imagining what it would be like if the only way to get around was either by boat or on foot in every city.
St. Mark's Square
The main attraction of Venice (well other than the gondolas and other boats) was St. Mark's Square and the Doge palace.
Burano
Famous for its lace, the little town of Burano is just an hour by boat from Venice. The pastel colored houses made for a very upbeat and happy atmosphere. The detail that goes into each square inch of lace is truly astounding.
Our third hop-on hop-off bus of the trip and it was pretty cool although much shorter than the others.
Colosseum
Our first stop of the day was at the Colosseum which was a mad house with all the tourists. It seems to me that, after seeing much of the things to see in rome today, tourists only go to like 5 things in the entire city. We paid for a tour (which also got us a tour of the palatine hill) which felt a little sketchy as we were going through security and skipping all the lines but its a real company with licensed guides so whatever.
Palatine Hill
After the Colosseum, we headed to our new tour guide for the palatine hill and he was awesome. Throughout my schooling, I had heard the story of the founding of rome through the republic and emperors too many times to count but he was able to put the entirety of Roman history into perspective in a way that I had not thought of before nor had been taught.
Trevi Fountain & Spanish Steps
These get grouped because I was not as impressed by them. The fountain was extraordinarily beautiful but was also extraordinarily crowded. We are talking 15 people deep around the whole thing. Its beautiful but I dont get what the fuss was about. I guess we can call this feeling 'The Mona Lisa Effect' (something that people say is a big deal then doesn't live up to expectations).
The Spanish steps were cordoned off because they are being repaired although I'm sure, had they been open, you would not have been able to see a single inch of marble because of all the humans on top of them. All in all, the last two things of the day were pretty meh in my book.
The good thing about early flights is that you can actually do something on the day that you get to a new place. The bad thing is that you are too tired to do very much. We saw a few sights near our hostel then took a very long nap until dinner time.
It was republic day here but by the time that we got downtown after checking in, all the festivities had ended which was unfortunate. We did end up going to the top of the Vittorio Emmanuel monument which had some great views of the forum, Colosseum, and the city in general.
