Venice

Last weekend I went to Venice - I had already been to Venice before, but it's a really cool city, it was Becky's birthday and she had never been before, so I was glad to go back. It was crazy hot, but the sun and humidity was kind of a nice break from the rain and relatively cold temperatures that have been in Amsterdam and Hamburg lately.

On Friday night Becky's flight was delayed (it was her birthday, they couldn't have accounted for that!?), so we didn't leave the airport for our hotel til around 1am. After a taxi to the island and then a cool nighttime water taxi ride through the city we finally made it to the hotel and crashed immediately. Saturday was much more eventful though as we went for a run along the lagoon in the morning, had some delicious pasta for lunch, roamed around the city quite a bit in the afternoon, hit up a wine bar and had a really cool dinner on the water right near San Marco square in the evening, and had a drink at the speakeasy-looking bar in our hotel while a big wedding was going on there at night.

view from the hotel

San Marco, with the Campanile and Basilica

Ponte di Rialto

Venice was much like I remembered it from 3 years ago - very warm, quite a lot of tourists, but also incredibly unique and a definite must-see. A city that doesn't have any cars is unique enough, but the mix of canals and narrow alleyways that make up the city's structure you can't really find anywhere else. The city is basically some islands of buildings clumped together in no particular arrangement with crooked alleys and canals connecting everything and a large square with a church in it every so often to open the space up a little bit. There's also a really strange mix of old, very genuine Venetians and obviously foreign tourists - with nothing in between. No businessmen, no expats living there, just true Italians and blatant tourists.

I also got a new faster lens for my camera, which I had to test out a bit.

Becky and bokeh

So Sunday we did a little more eating, a little more seeing the city, and then it was off to the airport (on a ferry straight from the square to the airport, no cars involved!). It was a nice relaxing weekend, which was much appreciated.

San Marco from the water

Next, it's my last week of work, then two weeks of vacation in the Middle East!