Real-Life Masquerade

         My first day of school was fine. I had trouble in history, but that's about it. Math is a univeral language until you hit word problems, so that's not to bad. The true meaning of this post is to talk about my recent mini-vacation to.... Venice. Yes, Venice. This is by far the most beautiful city that I've ever been in. That's the best way to put it I think. I'll start from the beginning I guess.

  We packed our bags last night, pre-flight. Zero hour, 4am. And we were high as kites by 7am. (Just felt like useing that) Anyway, we arrived at the Venice International airport around 8:30, 9 in the morning and walk a kilometer to the water taxi's. I was dead tired for some reason, so I slept the whole flight and the whole water taxi ride, which was just as long as the flight for some reason. Once we arrived we went to the hotel and dropped our stuff off. I left everything at the hotel except my camera. The first thing we went to was a bridge named the Accamedia. It is special cause it is almost completely made out of wood and still standing. I got some great pictures of the grand canal from that. I forgot to say that before we did this we took a tour of a theater named 'The Venician'. It's a tad expensive to get in, but we did and got to sit in a box for an hour watching a rehearsal of Mozart's 'Don Giovanni'. It couldn't of gotten closer to the actual performance if I do say so myself. All that was missing was costumes. After this we headed towards St. Marks Cathedral and ate at the local HardRock Cafe. I ordered a good burger because I've been craving a burger for about a week now, even though the food is amazing. The two boys got burgers also and they though they were really good. Francesca got a pulled chicken sandwich, and was baffled on how to eat something so big. It was a good experience, and I bought myself a pin there to keep with tradition. (Tell me-pop to put it on the list of places we have pins from) Then after this we made our way to the Accamedia. From the Accamedia we hopped a water-bus to 'Ponte Rialto'. This bridge is neat because on it are a full set of stores and venders. It's like if the bridge connecting JFK Boulevard to the 12th Street Station in Philly had a Macy's on it, just not as big. We walked around here for a while and came to a set of stores. Now I have to talk about one of the best parts of Venice... the mask. Each mask is hand-painted and each is individual as far as I could see. Their are thousand of upon thousands where-ever you go in the city. They aren't as expensive as you may think, though I will tell you now that if you came to Venice and bought a mask for 10 euro, you could bring it to the U.S. and sell it for a few hundred. This has been added to my list of business idea's . I personally got four that I thought were really nice. By this time it was about dinner-time so we headed to the grand-canal for a good meal. I asked Valerio to order for me, just nothing big cause I was stuffed from the burger earlier. So I had a sort of salad with cuts of raw meat, but it was really good, and I've never had a problem with raw meat, so I liked it. We headed back to the hotel because Pier and Alle wanted to watch some Italian comedy show, but I didn't mind because I was pretty tired. I read a bit and fell right asleep.

         In the morning we woke up and went down to the lobby for some bread and coffee. Now this is my first Italian cappacino and it was the best cup of coffee I've ever had. We then walked to a winding staircase in a piazza that was pretty neat, I have pictures to the left. We headed to St. Marks Cathedral and found that the line was ridiculously long, so instead me and Francesca waited in a shorter line for a giant tower that is in St. Marks Square. I had an interesting conversation with a man from Australia which made the line shorter. Now the best feeling so far is being able to translate for another English speaker, know that exactly a month ago you were exactly like him (yes, I am writing this on my one month anniversary) We then went into the Doge's Palace. It was huge and had alot of different artwork in it. I went on that little bridge you always see when you look up Venice, the one that leads to a prison. The prison was nice also, but I would hate to be on the other side of the bars. We then went into St. Mark's It wasn't as big as the Duomo in Milan, but I think it was more artistic. The whole ceiling is a Mosaic. This is when you take little pieces of stone or glass and put them together to make a picture. You can see an example in one of my photos. We went onto the balcony and then came down for lunch. The dinner was clams with a white wine sauce and then a assortment of fried fish. Afterwards we went to the hotel where Valerio met us from a lawyer conference about cross-examination. We walked around some more then headed finally to the airport. While on the plane I got some good shots of Roma as night. I came home and fell right asleep. I woke up and am now writing this. See you later. Ciao!