Venice

While Donna and Ryan were here, we went to Venice.  We drove this time because we had to drop Ryan off at the airport and it was interesting seeing that side of Venice.  Obviously you can’t drive in Venice, but they have part of the island that is designated for parking and it is expensive!  I think we were there for 4-5 hours and it cost 18E to park.  It is much easier taking the train.

We took the water taxi from the north side of Venice to San Marco Square.  Abbie enjoyed looking out the window most of the ride.

Venice was pretty much packed the day we were there, but we couldn’t have asked for a prettier day.  The weather was pretty much perfect!

Apparently this is the time of year where San Marco Square floods.  It was quite interesting because it’d never seen it like this.  They had riser set up all over to use as sidewalks, but the people were barely moving on them.  They were even as wide as a normal sidewalk and people were having trouble getting anywhere on them.  So we decided to forego the risers and brave the HUGE puddle.  We found a fairly shallow part of the puddle and tiptoed through it and we didn’t even get wet… that time.

You can see in this picture where the people are walking next to the risers – that’s where we walked the first time.  If you went slow enough, you didn’t get wet.  Some of the puddles were 6-8 inches deep though, so you definitely didn’t want to walk through the lowest parts of the square.

We went into San Marco Cathedral this time.  It was our first time in there and it was pretty neat.  They had really neat mosaics and the inside of the cathedral is amazing.

    The entrance way of the cathedral also floods.  There were these doors and then 4-5 steps going up to another set of doors that led into the cathedral.  The water was up to the first step and they had the risers in there to walk on too.

 

I thought this picture was pretty funny.

 

Abbie asleep in the Ergo.  She had her first real meltdown during this visit to Venice.  We wanted her to go in the Ergo while we walked through the water and she had other plans apparently.  It was pretty bad and took us a while to get her to calm down but she eventually did.  Hopefully we won’t have too many more of those episodes, but we’ve already had one more since this one.  Being a toddler is tough.  =)