Our First Day In Venice

Ross and I spent two nights in Venice at the end of his visit. To get there, we took the train from Milan, which takes just over two and a half hours. It's not too bad. It's not too hard to get to the station from my house, as Centrale is on the M3 line. And they have this cool thing where you can buy the tickets online and just take the code to the train. Actually, even better, the will send you a free text with all your train information and the code that you just show to the conductor. It even works on dumb phones!

Anyway, in Venice it was Carnival, and it was awesome! We spent a lot of time just wandering the streets. Venice is just a gorgeous city. If I could live anywhere in Italy, I think it would be Venice. I have trouble thinking of a city that is more beautiful. During this trip, I took more photos of people than the city, but there are a few cool ones, like this photo of the erosion of the bricks in one of the canals.



We walked out through Dorsoduro neighborhood. There were people in costume wandering the streets.



We made it all the way out to Santa Maria della Salute, where costumed revelers were posing for photographers.



These two were posing on the Ponte dell'Accademia.



Piazza San Marco was packed with people. The square has a big temporary stage set up for carnival, and we arrived while one of the rounds of the costume contest was happening. This guy was just hanging around in the square



This male Medusa was pretty awesome, too.



Between the rounds of the contest, they let some folks into the pen with the contestants, I got some great pictures with them! Here's a beautiful French lady.



This group is from San Francisco, dressed as the landmarks of Venice, the Ducal Palace on the left, Santa Maria on the right, and in the middle, the Bridge of Sighs.



There were lots of cool groups!



We walked all the way back to our hotel on Lista de Spagna, taking pictures and taking in the sights. This guy was by our hotel doing street percussion.



We went out to dinner near our hotel.