blog d'europe: venice, part II

sooo, thanks to my looovely friend neesha, i managed to get each and every one of my venice photos back. so happy! i know it's been a good month since i was in italia, but better late than never - right?? it was actually really nice to flick through my photos (essentially for the first time)...brought back memories! anyway, here's some of what we got up to in the second half of our trip...

piazza san marco is probably the most famous area of venice. it's in the south and is home to the san marco basilica, the campanile (bell tower), palazzo ducale (doge's palace), and a bunch of other monuments/statues/buildings - none of which i can remember the names of. i looved this square; it's so rich with history & no matter what time of day it's full of life.
we visited the basilica, and after being told that we weren't dressed 'decently', we bought the obligatory 1€ 'shawl' & 'skirt' combination. aka, a giant chux-wipe in mustard orange to tie sarong-style around our waists. we had a good laugh, or two...or three....

after a strenuous afternoon of gelati, photo-snapping & dipping our toes in the canal, we popped into doge's palace. as the name suggests, it's a huge palace that was home to the many dukes of venice. it was an incredible place to see first-hand, but what really blew me away were the lavishly decorated ceilings, with gold lions, velvet flowers, frescos, carvings, etc. had to crane my neck everywhere we went just to take it all in. a disappointing part of our visit was when we discovered that the bridge of sighs had been covered up by scaffolding & advertisements. the bridge is the passageway where convicted prisoners were sent to the cells (doge's palace was also home to a prison) - they crossed a bridge with little windows & were said to 'sigh' because it was the 'last look of the free, outside world' they would get...

venezia has such a laid-back approach to life, and we somehow managed to come at a time when there weren't too many tourists (apparently in summer it becomes impossible to move thru the alleyways!), so we were able to enjoy it that little bit more. we checked out the market stalls in the sestiere san polo (one of the six 'regions' of venice), near the ponte rialto.

venice is the hometown of carnevale, italy's famous masked festival - so there's masks of every size, shape, style & colour bursting out of the stalls.

asides from gelati, pizza & pasta - another little thing we got hooked on while in venice were 'fruit cups' - 1€ for a cup filled with strawberries, watermelon, pineapple, melon, blueberries, etc. yuuum! have definitely missed these since being back home in paris.

ciao!

S.