Falling for Italy Part 3: Venturing in Venice

Alright. Here we are. The final part.

You know, honestly, I don’t have a lot to say we did. That’s not to say that we didn’t do anything, just that Venice doesn’t have as much STUFF to do as, say, Rome. That’s okay, though, because it was so beautiful it was enough of an adventure just walking around.

Of course, we did do the requisite tourist things, like San Marco’s. This is basically a big square by the water with the biggest “tourist attractions,” which are a church, a tower and an astrological clock. You basically stand in the middle and turn on your heel and BAM you’ve seen it all. Well, I mean, you can go in–and the church is beautiful oh my god–but it’s not enough for days and days, like Rome.

Another thing you can’t escape without is, of course, a gondola ride, which we also did. No, our gondolier did not sing, but that’s fine. It was meditative to ride through the canals. I got to sit in the front of the boat and just watch us move forward. It was weird to wave up at the people on the bridges, taking touristy pictures of us like we’d be taken earlier in the day.

There are, of course, the important Venice bridges, but honestly I didn’t take much note of them. Like the Ponte Vecchio in Florence, they’ve just been taken over by sellers and tourists and aren’t much fun. I’m not even sure I have any real pictures of them. I’ll just hand you another picture of gorgeous Venice.

One of the things we did go and see was the Peggy Guggenheim Museum right on the Grand Canal. It houses one of the best modern art collections I’ve ever seen. Picasso, Ernst, Pollock and more are just right there, hanging out, in a space that continues to remind you it also used to be Peggy Guggenheim’s house. (She’s actually buried outside in the sculpture garden.) Along with the wine tour, it might have been one of my favorite things that we did!

Honestly, I don’t know what else I could day about the

The scarf is mine from Florence. Not the canal.

individual places. Those are the highlights of the things we did, the material things. I got a lot of presents for people and even grabbed a couple of things for myself.

I titled these blog posts “Falling for Italy” because, quite frankly, I wasn’t sure how I was going to take this trip. I wasn’t opposed to Italy, of course, but I wasn’t as drawn to it as some of the other people I traveled with. I can say with confidence that Italy won me over, heart and soul. I do wish I had been able to actually communicate, but besides the language barrier it was a gorgeous, lovely place to take a vacation in and I enjoyed every single second of it. I’ve seen things that I never imagined I would, stood next to things I’ve only seen in textbooks and learned a bit about myself along the way. What more could you ask for, really?