Italy, Part 4

Our last stop on our trip was to Venice, one of the coolest yet weirdest cities I have ever visited. As I'm sure most of you know, Venice is an island, on which no cars are allowed, because most of the streets are canals. Most homes and shops face a small canal on one side. These canals are navigated by boats, including the famous gondolas, which somehow manuever through the super narrow waterways. We were lucky enough to have a hostel in the midst of it all. The street our hostel was on, to give you a sense, was literally too narrow for an umbrella to fit down.

Venice is another one of those cities that doesn't have a ton of attractions, but is more fun to simply wander through. Several times we intentionally tried to get lost, but it is almost impossible. The winding streets and seemingly endless canals create one of the most bizarre yet beautiful places I've seen. We walked for a long time along the river at the edge of town, from which there are beautiful views and a fresh whiff of the sea, which I don't get too much of in Brussels (or Minneapolis!). We also found a park at the very edge of town, which was cool because there weren't any tourists there and it had some gorgeous views of the water.

Unfortunately, it was raining for a majority of our stay, so it was hard to get motivated to explore too much in Venice. However, we did visit the famous St. Marco Piazza, which has a beautiful church and a humongous square that is beautifully lit at night. Particularly when it rains, and when there is high tide, the square floods, leaving people to either wade in rain boots through the 2-foot deep water or walk on temporary boardwalks that the city puts up every day. It is one of the strangest things I've ever seen: hundreds of people balancing on these boardwalks so they don't fall into the flooded square. In addition, none of the shops along the square seem to think its wise to shut their doors while it floods. Even the church on the piazza floods. What other city's central square floods on a regular basis? Venice is really cool, but it has to be one of the most unwisely constructed cities in the world.

Overall, the trip was amazing. Italy was one of the countries I had most wanted to visit, and I got to go there with 3 of my best friends from my program. I also was pretty much in heaven on the culinary front, as I had A LOT of pasta, pizza, and gelato. And a little red wine too :). It was interesting to see the metropolis (Rome), Tuscany, and then some moderately sized cities in the north, because while they all have similarities they are all really different too. Unfortunately, I'm now back in the real world of school, tests, and papers, but this weekend I'm going to Prague so stay tuned for details on that adventure!