alright, let's get back on this whole reporting about my travels gondola, shall we?

next was venice. the train ride from milan to venice was just a few hours and when we got into venice, proper middle of the water santa lucia train station venice, who was there to meet us? water! yes. during the research phase of the trip i had done the very prudent thing of not only booking some sassy hotels, but also acquiring directions to said hotels in the hopes of being "on top of things" as best as possible prior to getting to a place. the print out directions for getting to our hotel from the train station listed no less that forty-six twists and turns and streets and bridges, i already had my misgivings about even finding a proper street sign let alone all forty-six demarcations it was going to take to get from point a to b ala the advice of trusted friend and advisor google maps. so we tried, jen and i put up the good fight toward following these directions and then about two minutes later... walked. just followed the signs that said s. marco/rialto this way. the signs themselves were a kind of plaything. abundant, to some extent, one wouldn't get too far without taking cue from a new one having shown its face to point in some new direction and oftentimes two... look at a map of venice. there is a plan there, but its not a particularly linear one. but we found our hotel, and finding it once under passes and tucked away, we were able to find it every other time we sought it out. not always from the same angle, but always and finally there.

after de-bagging we took our cue for the four days we would spend in venice from that first experience, let's just walk. and so walk we did. we found piazza s. marco and the rialto senza dei problemi (without issue) and we found plenty of other things too. and each time we would find something we would then take out the handy little map (the map was actually rather large and not usually consulted save for in the room) and its slim book explaining specific attractions (which was slim and taken out oftentimes) and find where we were, what we were looking at and why we should be looking at it. and so in this fashion we saw a lot of venice. i would venture to say, with a pretty reasonable sense of speaking the truth, that we saw most of venice. we had, after all, four days without rain. it seemed like by day four we had even become locals, walking through the gardens and parks which were populated mostly with morning joggers and students from the nearby military academia. we also managed to suss out a good few grocery stores by which to lunch and snack by, always a highlight.

we spent one day taking advantage of the public transport system of vaporetti, boats, to see both the glassblowing island of Murado and its nice little glassblowing museum and the beaches of Lido, another island, slim and long and where cars and busses were allowed. we also used our twelve hour passes to spend a little longer in transit and to see venice from the vantage of the water.

we never did round up the desire to set foot in a gondola, perhaps another time. it seemed their appeal was more in watching them than in riding one. plus, I didn't hear a single "O sole mio!" coming from the dashing gondoliers as they rowed. it is quite a thing of beauty to watch these men, we never saw a female gondolier, keep their balance throughout all kinds of watery mood shifts.

we did manage to visit the New and Old Ghettos and spent some time in both the Jewish museum and touring three of the five synogogues in the area. it was the only time we took a guided tour throughout the time we were traveling and i think it worked out very positively. the guide was friendly and informative and the tour small enough and taking place in a fairly untrafficked locale to allow for ease of movement and close attention.