Venice!

And we finally make it to Italy!

Venice, readers, is a beautiful place. I'm a fan. Didn't know if I was going to be a fan, now totally a fan. Were it not so expensive, I think Venice would be the perfect place to go and get lost for two weeks, because it's like the perfect place. They have pizza, pork products, boats, gelato, cools masks, pork products... Venice has got it all. Serious offer: if anyone wants to go to Venice, I'm all about it. Especially since the weather will be nicer at anytime of the year besides January and February.

We were only in Venice for a day and a half, but it wasn't a big deal-- Venice is Kara's old study abroad stomping grounds, so we were set.

We stayed in a cute little hotel right on the water near the Rialto Bridge, so we settled in after our flight landed from Barcelona and did our usual walking around town business.

Picture from the Rialto Bridge. Not pictured: the Rialto Bridge.

We headed to Piazza San Marco, where we did a quick walk-through to complete our greater mission of the day: operation pizza.

A very fancy, not Ottoman clocktower.

BRB, St. Mark's Basilica.

We got to walk past the Bridge of Sighs, a local legend dictating that if two people in love kiss under it in a gondola at sunset, they will be granted everlasting love.

Which is sweet, except for the fact that the Bridge of Sighs actually connects the old prisons and the interrogation rooms and that convicts passing through the bridge would sigh as they caught their last glimpse of Venice through its barred windows, letting out a sigh as they passed through.

MAN, I LOVE VENICE.

This is not flattering.

So, onward we walk on Operation Pizza and Pork Products.

I've never been so happy to see pizza. Or ham. This was literally the most delicious thing I had in all of Italy.

We continued to walk off the pizza and pork products (mission complete), until Kara pointed out the building they used to film part of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade to me. So this picture, plus a minor freakout, was a very necessary pitstop.

I love going places Harrison Ford has been!

Later that night, Emily and I had our first tastes of real-deal gelato. Stracciatella, I'm a big fan of your work.

The next day, after we slept off the major food and dietary damage we did the night before, we headed back to Piazza San Marco to visit St. Mark's Basilica.

I sincerely, passionately, truly hope everyone who does
this gets shit on.

Hello, St. Mark's Basilica, with all your history and whatnot. It's mosaicked (!!! so excited this is really a word) in gold, much like the surviving mosaics in the Ayasofya (both are examples of Byzantine architecture, if you care) but in way better condition... since it wasn't, you know, sieged by the Ottomans and stuff. If you scroll back up to that first picture I added of St. Mark's, you can see replicas of the bronze Greek horses stolen from the Hippodrome in Constantinople (now Istanbul, if you weren't paying attention). It made sense for the horses to be on display at the Hippodrome, since chariot racing was the Hippodrome's thing, but I guess the Catholics thought they'd look better in Venice. Sometimes, throughout history, the Catholics tend to be assholes. And I can say that because my mom teaches in a Catholic school, so the natural balance is not upset.

Definitely was not supposed to take that picture. Suck on that, the pope.

After St. Mark's, we had some lady take our picture, for posterity's sake, and then headed back to our hotel to round up our belongings so that we could continue our journeys through Italy!

You know what they say, all roads lead to Rome... and ironically, so do many train tracks.