Venice: The city of water... and fog

Ali arrived last Friday so I left work early to meet her at the airport. For my birthday she gave me a really cool Moleskine book for Venice with maps, and lots of room for notes. It ended up coming in really handy to keep everything together and help us get back to a cheap pizza place we found by the Rialto, which I will definitely visit when I go back in May.
When she arrived we took all her stuff back to my room, then went and got a schnitzel from the "Schnitzel Haus" across the street. While we ate schnitzel and watched an episode of Extras we packed our big look-at-me-I'm-a-tourist backpacks and then set out to see the city.

The Vienna transit system is an honour system, enforced with random checks. However, these checks are almost entirely (if not only) on the subway system and night buses. Therefore, you can take unlimited trams and buses without much fear of being caught. So, we took a tram into the city center.

We had about 2 hours to kill, so I showed Ali the major sights as we took the scenic route to the train station. Since late January there has been a large ice rink in front of the Rathaus (city hall) which also winds along the paths throughout the park. As the Viennese winter is like early fall in Canada the rink is laid on top of a mat of refrigeration tubes to keep it frozen. This comes in really handy because it has been very very nice here, having "snowed" only TWICE since Christmas, with never enough to completely cover the grass before melting away. Sorry Canadians, had to rub it in...
We got on the night train to Venice around 8:30pm and settled into our bunks for our 12 hour trip.
We arrived in Venice at 8:00 Saturday morning to find the city waking up to a light dusting of fog, which we assumed would lift as the day went on...
The ferry to the island of Lido (where our hostel was) was an hour long but it toured down the grand canal, under the Rialto bridge, and past St.Marks square, making it more of a treat than a trip.
Our Hostel "Livia Oliva" was a small B&B on the island of Lido, and was actually a nice woman's house with 3 extra rooms and a small dining room for guests. We dropped our heavy bags off in our room (we were upgraded to the ensuite room!), grabbed our keys, and headed back to Venice across the lagoon using the direct boat which was much faster and closer to the B&B.

Venice is a city like no other, it maintains it's charm in spite of the tourist trade, because it has no other practical options. Gondolas anchored to wooden piles are cheaper and easier to run than the few small boats anchored to fancy docks, so they stay.
The city felt like a movie set or a Disneyland attraction because it was so drastically different. A city without cars, trucks, buses, bikes, skateboards, or mopeds, in places all you could hear were people talking in a smattering of the world's languages underscored by the continuous lapping of waves and trickling of water.
We wandered around the small alleyways on the main island of San Marco until we came upon the Piazza San Marco. The highlights of the Piazza are the ornate Basilica di San Marco and the Campanile (bell tower). The Campanile has been there in one form or another since the 9th century, but this one was finished in 1912 after the previous one collapsed in 1902.
The Piazza San Marco is probably most famous for the huge flock of pigeons which infest the square and mob the tourists and children who voluntarily cover themselves in bird food as if to say "Hey Ma, look at me! I'm covered in disease!". This woman was selling the packages of food for 1€, and had lots of friends to keep her company.
We decided to avoid bird flu and instead chased the pigeons. It was tempting not to kick them, a they get so close to you. They were like little smelly footballs with legs. Smelly? Yes. Even on a cool day, a large overfed flock of greasy dirty pigeons have an overwhelming aroma of... greasy dirty pigeon.The symbol of Venice is the lion. This is because the Venetians stole the remains of St.Mark the Apostle and smuggled him out of Alexandria, Egypt in the 9th century to place him in their basilica, and St.Mark's symbol is the winged lion. Apparently back in the day some Venetian s would keep live lions in their gardens as a symbol of status. The thought of walking through the twisting alleyways of Medieval Venice at night with only a torch to light the way surrounded by the roars of lions is terrifying. This lion, on display in the Piazzetta San Marco was apparently stolen from the Turks at some point in the past.
The basilica was very ornate, made from a rainbow of marbles, mosaics, and gold. The photo below is of the main entrance, as photos weren't allowed inside. The interior was amazing, with domed ceilings completely covered in golden mosaics in all different styles dating from the 11th-16th centuries.
After touring the basilica we wandered around Venice, stopping to take photos here and there.
We turned a corner and came upon the Rialto bridge. The bridge has three sets of stairs, with the two narrower side staircases separated from the large central one by a line of store booths selling souvenirs. The stone bridge is over 400 years old, meaning the small arched booths now selling tacky souvenirs have seen dozens of generations of owners work their entire lives beneath them. The bridge was completed 5 years before Shakespeare wrote the Merchant of Venice, that's some good engineering.
The View down the Grand Canal. To the left you can see the large ferry-buses which allow you to get throughout the city fairly easily.
A photo of me sporting my only Venetian souvenir; a wool scarf to keep warm in the chilly
That night we went to a Vivaldi concert in a former church. Before the concert we waited around outside the church and Ali helped me discover the wonder of a 15 second shutter. My camera is so much better than I ever thought, so many cool options I'm only really discovering now.
With 30 more minutes to kill and a bathroom to find we headed back to the Grand Canal, taking photos with a 15 second exposure as we went.
The concert was very good, an ensemble called Interpreti Veneziani with 4 violins, 1 viola, 1 cello, 1 double bass, and a harpsichord. They played Vivaldi's 4 Seasons and some other pieces. They all looked like they were having a lot of fun, except for one guy who was very serious and hardcore, having memorized the entire show. However, his solos (every violinist was 1st violin for 1 season) were amazing. Their encore performance was the best of all. They all put down their bows and plucked out a song on the strings of their instruments.

After the concert we headed back to catch the ferry to Lido. When we transferred ferries near the Piazza San Marco, I got this cool photo of the Bridge of Sighs (using a 15 sec exposure). The motor boat which passed through the photo is nothing but a ghost ship with wake.
The fog in the lagoon was so thick that we couldn't see anything other than the lights of the ferry reflecting off the thick white mist hovering over the aquamarine water, until the lights of Lido suddenly appeared out of the mist when we were meters from the dock.

The next morning we slept in longer than we intended because the bed was far too comfortable. When we woke up breakfast had been laid out in the small dining room and the other guests, a young couple from France (or Switzerland?) were already eating. This place was so nice, and such a great deal that my mom and I will definitely stay there when we visit in May, its already booked.

The day before we had hoped that the light fog would lift so that Sunday would be warmer and better for photos. Instead, the fog was much thicker. You couldn't see Venice across the Lagoon, but you could hear all the church bells tolling eerily in the distance.
We got off at the Piazza San Marco and went to the base of the tower to get audio tours. However, it was closed on Sundays, so we took a photo of the gate.
The Doge's Palace is directly beside the Basilica (which was formally the Doge's chapel).
We toured the Doge's Palace, the bridge of Sighs, and the dungeons. The Palace was very impressive with huge ornate old rooms, but like many historical buildings there is little original furniture so the palace looked fairly empty, and was chillingly cold. If it wasn't for all the velvet robes and wigs the Doge, his family, and the other politicians surely wore the palace would have been a pretty uncomfortable place in the winter.

One last foggy view of Piazza San Marco.
Inside the city the fog was much lighter, but we had run out of time to take a gondola ride.After some stressful running around we got tickets for the bus to the airport, which we had to wait for anyways, and traveled the 65 minutes to Treviso, a city on the mainland with a small airport serviced mainly by Ryanair and Sky Europe, Europe's largest low-cost airlines. From Treviso we flew two hours to Girona, Spain then took a bus to the beautiful city of Barcelona.

Our two days in Venice were an amazing, but very expensive experience. I can't wait to visit again in May with my mom, but my wallet sure can.