The city of lights

On Wednesday I started out the day with the free breakfast at my hotel. According to wikitravel, my hotel is one of the nicer/pricier in the city. I'm sure it was picked for its proximity to the HRC, but it is pretty nice so far. The rooms are very small, but the rest of the hotel is nice. The breakfast had lots of food to choose from.

I went over to meet more of the HRC staff. When I got there, it was crazy. Men were working all over the place, people were working on their laptops, etc. To make a long story short, not only were they in the middle of trying to get things ready for their opening in a few weeks, they had no idea that I was coming, or that there was even a photoshoot scheduled. Translation: somebody somewhere screwed up big time, and it wasn't me.

So, I told them to try to have things ready on Thursday, and I would be back then.

I then headed back to my room and changed clothes, grabbed my camera, and headed out. I visited the Piazza San Marco, which is the plaza of Saint Mark. It is one of the more famous/popular places in venice, and there were a lot of people milling around. The weather was fantastic. High 50s, lots of sun. I didn't wear a coat. I wandered around and took an elevator to the top of the Campanile di San Marco, or the belltower (interestingly it was re-built in 1912 after collapsing. The original was around 1,000 years old). The views from up here were incredible. The pictures should tell some of the story.

I then proceeded to wander through the streets for a while, slowly making my way towards the Rialto bridge, probably the most famous bridge in Venice. The streets range from very narrow to almost impossible to squeeze through. I literally found an alley where I worried about my shoulders fitting through it, I kid you not. Its a good thing I went through head first, because if I had tried to go through sideways, there is no way I would have fit through.

Venice is full of shops of all kinds: clothing stores, very high fashion stores, candy shops, bakeries, coffee shops, pizza everywhere, lots of murano glass shops, and everything in between. The gondolas are everywhere, and their gondoliers (sp?) are constantly trying you to go on a ride. Who goes on a gondola by themself??

The most interesting things to me are the canals, the way the city winds around and has so many small passageways, of course the architecture, and the history of the island. It is extremely photogenic, I took over 500 pictures.

The nice thing about Italy is that I no longer need an excuse to eat pizza. Its Italian food! So I got some for lunch. It was pretty good. I have a theory about food in foreign countries, but I don't think the world is ready to hear it just yet. I also got some "gellato" which is supposed to be special, but from what I can tell is just regular ice cream. It was good though.

So I wandered for most of the day, took over 500 pictures, walked over 20,000 steps.

At dusk I went to one of the 3 main bridges over the grand canal to photograph one of the more famous views of venice. There were a few other photographers there and we talked about nerdy things. I am pleased with the results.



I then ate dinner along the grand canal. I had spaghetti. It seems to me that the atmosphere in Venice is what you are really there to experience more than anything. The atmosphere around the grand canal is very unique in my opinion.

That concludes my first full day in venice. I will post pictures as I can get to them. I will try to get thursday's blog up at some point too. It was much less exciting however.

john