Personal Post: Day 3: Burano-Venice

Despite having a background in the Spanish language, I found myself having a lot of difficulty with the Italian language. Before the trip, I had wanted to study a few basic phrases of Italian, but never really got around to it. I did learn very few basic words, but I found that bonjourno just doesn't quite roll off my tongue as easily as buenos dias does.

Speaking of languages, I found that Italians speaking English is kind of cute. They drag out certain syllables that we normally don't in English, and there's just something cute about that. This was especially true of the guy who worked at the front desk at our hotel.

During the hour-long ride on the Venice Lagoon, I found myself thinking of many questions about life in Venice. First, how deep is the water? I assume that the answer is somewhere on the internet. And the depth obviously varies different in different areas. The water in the lagoon is definitely deeper than that of the canal. Also, how many accidents do they have on water? Just as we would have car accidents, there are probably boat accidents as well.

Burano is famous for its lace production. Its sister, Murano, is famous for its glass production. We didn't visit Murano because of time limitations. It was originally on our schedule, but because of yesterday's delays, we decided to skip it. Burano is also famous for is its brightly colored houses. They were painted that way so that the fisherman (back in the olden days) would recognize which was his house. The cloudy sky didn't bring out the colors as well as a bright blue sky would have, but they were beautiful nonetheless. Every color of the spectrum were represented on the walls of these houses.

After the short visit to Burano, we rode the valporetto back to Venice. Our first destination was the famous Rialto Bridge, which traverses the Grand Canal. Yes, it's a big bridge across a big canal, but I didn't get that feeling that this bridge was that special. Perhaps that's because there are bridges everywhere you go in Venice. The Rialto was probably the 50th bridge we had seen since arrival. The top of the Rialto Bridge had a good view of the Grand Canal, the famous one seen in many photographs. There were a few shops on the Rialto itself, but many more shops lining the streets behind either side of the Grand Canal. We wandered through the streets, window shopping at the stores. There were only a few types of products sold at these stores: food (prosciutto, cheese, chocolate), costumes (mostly masks), and other souvenirs (soap, candles).

Any trip to Venice would not be complete without a gondola ride. After all, it's what Venice is known for. Because of the weather, we had some reservations about riding in one. We were cold when we were walking around, and the prospect of sitting in a boat for half an hour makes it seem all that much colder. Finally, we decided that this was the ultimate Venice experience, and we just couldn't leave without doing it.

Our ride began on the Grand Canal, then meandered through some of the smaller canals behind it. It was a pretty interesting experience; cool to see Venice from a different perspective, but also kind of scary from the tipping boat standpoint. I have never been in a kayak or canoe, and this feeling wasn't at all familiar to me. I was really afraid of tipping over and falling into dirty, cold water. After about half an hour, we made it back to the gondola stop safe and sound.

Afterwards, we went to St. Mark's Square. We wanted to see it during the day. It is famous for its pigeons, and we weren't disappointed. Unfortunately, all I could think of was histoplasmosis (infectious disease transmitted in bat/bird/pigeon droppings) or starring in a movie called "Attack of the Cloned Pigeons." I couldn't bring myself to feed the pigeons at all. In fact, I couldn't believe how many people were feeding the pigeons. Even when one of them flew within a foot of my face, I would scream out loud and run the other way. One question that I had: why didn't the pigeons attack the vendors that sold the feeds?

We rested for a little while back at the hotel before dinner. For dinner, we returned to the Rialto Bridge and found ourselves a nice restaurant sitting on the side of the Grand Canal. They set up standing lamp heaters so that we could dine outside. Even though Venice is famous for seafood, I chose the tagliatelle alfredo instead. It was so delicious! It's not as creamy as alfredo sauce is in the US, but it had such an intense flavor to it. Mmm, I love Italian food!