venice

To continue our little weekend in Italy, we arrived Saturday late afternoon in Venice. Since there was a huge festival going on that day, we knew ahead of time that parking was going to be a nightmare, so we parked at the airport and took the bus into the city. We arrived at the bus station without any clue where we were. For those that have been to Venice before, you know how difficult it is to navigate. After walking around the hot city for what seemed like hours (lugging our suitcases as well!), we finally found our hotel.

 

 

After a much needed shower, we headed out for dinner.

 

Gondola parking:

 

St. Mark's Square

 

At the water's edge, there were so many people and so many boats out on the water. The festival meant that they would have a fireworks show at 11:30pm, people started staking out there spots on the ground at 9pm. We had dinner (pizza and wine) on an outdoor patio right on the water. We were able to stay there and continue drinking wine all through the fireworks show.

 

My second fireworks show in two weeks, but this one was really impressive. It lasted over an hour.

 

This was the crowd of people after the show trying to make their way home.

 

On Sunday we walked around a bit, did some leather shopping (yay new purses!), and then sprung for a gondola ride, which is something I didn't do when I was there the last time because we were a group of college students on a budget :P

 

Rialto Bridge

 

Beautiful canals

 

Our gondolier: