This week, my family finally came to visit! I had been counting down the days until they arrived, and when my countdown app finally hit zero, I was beyond excited. We started our week off with a weekend in Venice, which is an extremely beautiful city. The train ride from Rome to Venice is only a few hours, so it was a quick trip.
On our first day, we explored St. Mark’s Square, which is probably the most famous spot in Venice. We went to St. Mark’s Cathedral, which is absolutely gorgeous, the Doge’s Palace, which is now a really cool museum, and the bell tower, from which you can see the entire city. We bought a selfie stick from a street vendor, which provided us with hours of amusement for the entire trip (and some really awesome pictures!). Venice is famous for its Murano glass, so we couldn’t leave without doing some shopping. We also took a gondola ride that afternoon, which is as cool as everyone says it is.
The next day, we did a self-guided tour of the Venice Opera House, which is really cool and has a really unique history. It was actually burned down and reconstructed twice. We concluded our day with a walking tour, which was (unfortunately) not very good, but we got to see some really unique places in Venice, like Marco Polo’s house. We walked to the Rialto bridge, which is a huge and really famous bridge, and had dinner and shopped around there.
On our final day in Venice, we again walked to St. Mark’s Square (it was maybe five minutes from our hotel). There was some sort of race going on, so there were people packed into the streets and bands performing. It was really interesting to see a big cultural event like that. We took a water taxi to the train station (they don’t have cars in Venice), and headed back to Rome for the week.
We’re going to Pompeii and Sicily next, so be on the lookout for that article later on!