Venice/Venezia

All I can say is that, for all my travels, I've never seen a place like Venice! It is absolutely amazing. Venice is a city with no cars, only small alleys for pedestrians and canals for boats. There are small streets, smaller streets, and those that look like a crack between buildings! While there are some big tourist attractions in Venice, like the Piazza San Marcos, the best thing to do is wander around in those tiny alleys. After every third turn, you run into another small canal with a little bridge to cross to the next street.


We did go to the Peggy Guggenheim Museum, which is about the best museum I've seen (even compared to Paris--sorry Paris!) It has a collection of paintings that she used to own when the museum was her house. It's full of modern artists like Picasso, and Jackson Pollack. If you had Mrs. Tenenbaum for an art teacher, you've seen prints of some of these paintings, like Mondrian and Kandinsky. The house is right on the Grand Canal, so you can take a break from looking at art and sit on marble benches in front of the canal.


We also went to the Doge's Palace. The Doge was the Grand Duke of Italy, back in the day. His palace is spectacular. It also has a prison attached to it. If the Doge got angry with you, he could send you to the dungeon--no light, tiny rooms, and no hope. To get to the dungeon, you had to cross the Bridge of Sighs. They called it that because as each prisoner crossed it, he supposedly sighed at the beauty of Venice, which he would never see again.

We rode on big taxi boats called vaporettos, and tiny gondola taxis called traghettos.

We ate LOTS of gelato, as well as pizza, pasta, and paninis (sandwiches). But mostly we walked and walked. Venice is the world's largest art museum, and it's spectacular art!!