Venice: The Final Frontier (aka The Last Day in Italy)

Last night we had an overnight train from Venice to Vienna, so obviously I had no internet. Here is that post!

Yesterday we went to Venice. We got in pretty early, checked our baggage, and booked our overnight train for that night into Vienna, Austria. When all that was said and done, we headed out to hit the town.

Vienna is so cool looking. The way the water just runs throughout the whole city is awesome. No cars, and their taxis and metro system are boats. It is really awesome. We walked around exploring the city some for a while, walking through buildings and along water ways and over bridges. We eventually made our way to St. Marco Square and saw the big cathedral there and all the cafes, but did not go in because the line was too long. We saw the Bridge of Sighs, or at least some of it as most was covered by billboards because naturally it was being refurbished. Like everything in Europe this summer. We walked along the water some more and explored into the city. We looked at some stores, there were so many places selling those Venetian masks... some of them were so ornate, outrageous, and awesome.

We eventually found ourselves at the very end of the city, so we started to make our way back in the direction of the the train station. As we had been walking all this time, it had been raining lightly. Never much more then drizzle really, but fairly consistent for an hour or 2. When we got back to St. Marco Square we found that much of it had flooded. The water table was already high in Venice when we got here, so the rain raised it to the point where water seeps into the city from the roads and the waterways were flooding up some of the entrances into the paths. Everyone in the square was trying to maneuver through the same 1 person wide dry parts and it was causing major traffic. We just walked right around them through the very shallow water to get the hell out of there. We found the city fairly flooded throughout. We stopped in a park and some more stores as we walked.

We split up for a little while, and Sharon and I took a gondola ride around some of the city. It was really cool to ride in an actual gondola through the canals of Venice. Our gondola (pilot? captain?) rowed us and was even wearing one of those big gondola hats you see in movies.

We got our last real Italian meal at a place on the way, I had Spaghetti Bolognese. It was alright. The portion was super small though so we ended up getting a slice of pizza when we were almost back to the station. It was the most similar to pizza at home but the slice was huge and delicious. I had mushroom, yum!

While we were making our way back, we saw a small tornado in the distance. We weren't so sure it could be that at first so we studied it for a while, and there was a crowd watching as well. It was fluctuating in size and shape and absolutely swirling. It dissipated while we were watching after a while.

We got to the station, headed to Mestro station, and got our overnight train to Vienna Austria!