Venice… So much more than I expected…

Venice is so awesome… We have just come home tonight from a gondola ride… We are celebrating our 25th anniversary and another couple, Ron and Margie, being newlyweds. Not only did we have bubbly, but also music… and accordion player and a singer… It was so, well, I have no words… still feeling pretty high from the whole thing.

But, lets start at the beginning of today. We left Florence on a “Eurostar” speed train… took us two hours… hardly any time for the distance. We were in a first class car and the ride was so smooth. Wish we had the same sort of ting in between Seattle/Portland… It would take less time than what the train does now.
When we got to Venice, we boarded a water taxi for our hotel. Man… it looked like pandemonium on the water as all these water taxi’s, water bus’s, plain boats are jockeying for position. As we drove to our hotel, ahhh, I mean floated, to our hotel, we were feeling like we wanted to pinch ourselves. All was so cool!
Got to the hotel and had a bite to eat… right there, over the water. After a bit of time we headed out to check out this St Marks Square, with a huge cathedral loaded with more history…. We are now officially filled up with history. Will take a bit of time to really absorb it all. We’ve got so many things we want to check out on the net or in books. This church has more Byzantine influence… and is so beautiful, but in different ways. The emphasis here is mosaics… plus, we learned, some of the beautiful things in the interior were things stolen from Constantinople…. So… things may be stolen from the church during history, but, they benefitted from stolen goods too!
Then a visit to the Doge’s Palace… stair climbing and artwork, still in place where it was designed to be. Houses the largest canvas painting in Europe. The Palace was the government seat when Venice was a "Republic"… pretty ornate, with everything painted with meaning.... This system of elected Doges lasted for 1000 years, from 679AD till about 1789.
Then, a bit of a rest in our room, then to our gondola ride. No words… just pics!

A go fast train....

We walked to the water taxi and off we went....

Just a lovely drive to the hotel.... egads we really are in VENICE!

The golden staircase in the Doge's Palace, this is looking down two flights of stairs

Time for our gondola ride!

Our driver....

Some Bubbly while we enjoy the music and the journey!

Pretty neat, don't you agree!

Another Gondola with the sweetest puppy... we were close by and he wanted to come to our boat....

It was low tide during the ride... you can see where the tide comes up to.... when it floods, the tide rises usually another 3 feet.... causes a mess to say the lest!