Venice

Cross this off my bucket list- I made it to Venice!  The world's only city where people get around by boat and cars are banned, Venice is a must-see for anyone traveling to Italy.  Yes, it's touristy, and yes, it's crowded- but there's a reason for that.  The city is beautiful!  Here's the view we were greeted with when exiting the train station and crossing the bridge...how many cities can offer this?!

We only went to Venice for the day (we plan to go back another time) so we had a few things planned that we absolutely wanted to see:  St. Mark's Basilica and the Doge's Palace.  We could have taken a vaporetto, or water bus, to get to St. Mark's directly, but instead we decided to wander through Venice- it's an island- we figured we'd get there eventually!  It's difficult to navigate Venice using a map- streets are often labelled with 2 different names; and more often than not, you'll find yourself at a dead end facing the canal.  It's better to just surrender your map and explore- here are some of our rewards:

For visitors who may start to lose hope, these signs were posted fairly frequently throughout the city:

So we eventually made it to San Marco's.  The Basilica is grand, inside and out.  It's under renovation right now, so this is just a part of what the outside looks like.  Inside, the entire ceiling and walls are covered in mosaics and frescoes.  The church was built in the 11th century and houses Mark's bones.  Venetian merchants smuggled his bones from Alexandria in a barrel of pork fat.  Since Muslims are not allowed to touch pork, this prevented the guards from inspecting the cargo too closely.  For me, the highlights of the church were the 4 bronze horses, and the view of the square from the church terrace.  The 4 Greek bronze horses are the only kind existing in the world.  A Venetian doge in the 13th century stole them from Constantinople as part of his loot during the 4th crusade.  Due to environmental damage, the 4 horses are now stored inside the church, and the ones outside are wax replicas. 

Here are the great views of the square from up on the church terrace:

We also had a great view of the clock tower, built in 1496:

Stay tuned for part II of our trip to Venice, including the Doge's palace!