Italy Week: Venice

We did it!! We made it home safely from the most adventurous, exhausting, and AMAZING two weeks in the breathtaking country of Italy! Thank you all so much for sharing in our excitement, for your encouraging words and advice, and most of all, your prayers for safe travels! I had to giggle every time I was told “take plenty of pictures!” That was not an issue 🙂 The real challenge has been narrowing down which ones to share! I’m pretty sure I would shut down WordPress if I tried to load them all. Even though we came back with hundreds (okay, thousands) of beautiful pictures, we still took time to put the cameras away and just soak it all in. Sometimes photographers can forget how to view life through our natural lenses, which can kill creativity and artistry. This trip was a perfect refresher!

For the next five days we will be sharing our adventure with you! There is NO way to do it all in one post! There are countless stories to tell, so we’ll be sharing the main highlights along with the photos. And please feel free to give any feedback!

First up is Venice! We both agree that Venice was our favorite city! This was really the only city where we were able to get a taste of “a day in the life” without ANY tourists around. You have to work pretty hard to find an area with no tourists in popular cities in Italy!  There are no cars in Venice, everyone walks or boats, so the sounds of the city are as beautiful as the city look! The sound of a boat floating through the canal, the gentleman whistling as he walks to work, a violinist practicing in his home… it was peace at its finest.

We arrived in Venice around 3:00 (their time) on Sunday Sept. 14th. We took a ferry on the Grand Canal to the Rialto Bridge, then pulled our luggage up and down lots of steps to Hotel Canaletto. This place is a GEM! (Thank you to my amazing husband for finding it 🙂 We relaxed for a while, then took off to find the restaurant we had picked out for dinner. Venice is a bit difficult to navigate at first! It’s made up of a web of narrow streets (some more like dark alleys) with tall buildings, and it’s quite easy to get turned around! But with every corner we turned, it seemed to be more beautiful than the last. You’ll see what I mean!

Monday the 15th we spent the day exploring the city. We started off in a very crowded “touristy” area, then ventured off to the residential part on the city. This was one of the highlights of our trip! We found a produce store and bought a bundle of Moscato grapes and an apple, found a bridge to sit on within ear shot of a violinist practicing in their home, and watched the locals walk by. Aaaaahhh, so peaceful!!

(To see comments on individual photos, just move your cursor over the photo!)

It’s one thing when you know what you’re walking in to, but when you just happen to stumble upon THIS in the middle of who-knows-where in Venice, Italy… WOW!

Sunday night we went to a concert featuring Vivaldi’s work… in Vivaldi’s church!! It was phenomenal! On our way back to the hotel Reid surprised me by taking us through St. Mark’s Square, which is DAZZLING at night! When we got back to the hotel, we grabbed the tripod and headed back out to the get some night shots around Rialto bridge. Reid insisted on taking a few of me! What a beautiful city!!

 

We left EARLY Monday morning for the train station and on to our next stop: Cremona. Come back tomorrow to hear about our VERY interesting (to say the least) day.