only by charis: Venice, Italy!

The sixth city on my tour of Europe. By this time, Grace had already headed back to the States, so it was just me and the To's.

We woke up at 4am to get to the airport and Rome only to get stopped by the cranky RyanAir stewardess who stopped Ceci and I from boarding because our packs were too big. So Ceci repacked everything but ended up just holding a bunch of stuff in her arms and the stewardess let her through. Lame. No wonder their tickets are so stinkin cheap! I blame Ceci's Les Mis book. That's why my gnome took a picture with it.

Venice as my second favorite city on our trip after Cinque Terre. There's just no other city like it. At first I thought it would be a really musty and rancid-smelling place, but it turned out to be so much better than I expected. The weather was beautiful, the food was excellent, at night I got to go to a Vivaldi concert/opera, listen to the dueling orchestras in St. Mark's Square play from the Sound of Music soundtrack, and got lost in the winding pedestrians streets. One of my favorite memories are of me and Ceci leaning outside of my hotel window speaking Mandarin to a bunch of Chinese people taking a gondola tour in the canal just beneath us. <3 Venezia!

Picture of one the many "rivers" in Venice

The Rialto Bridge

On the Rialto Bridge looking at the main canal

Looking outside my window across the river

Gondola with an accordion and Italian singer on board

Ceci looking out the window at them

Main canal during sunset

St. Mark's Square where I ate it REALLY bad cause the pigeons freaked me out

Dueling orchestras

Another view from my window. There was so much traffic here!

Bovolo Stairs, Venice streets don't have names, so to get to my hotel, I had to look for this building first and find where I needed to go around the corner.