Survival of the fittest (Venice)

First and foremost, I need to say this will be the second hardest blog to write on Europe. Why? Because aside from Prague, Venice was the death of me. I hardly remember what occurred that day because all I can recall is trying not to have a heat stroke. Let's take into consideration that I am from Louisiana and have endured many a hot summer days, but Venice was literally on fire this day. I swear I could've fried an egg on the sidewalk, and had I had an egg I would've tried it.
So from Florence we headed to Venice following the beautiful sunflower following the road lined with fields of sunflowers that extended for miles; every one of the flowers facing the brightly shining sun. Since Venice is the Paris of Italy and extremely expensive we stayed in Treviso about 30 minutes away.
Before I go on, let me continue to set the scene for why I still have ill feelings toward Venice. On the ride in the air conditioning went out on the bus for the last hour or more of the ride. The windows don't open so we all got our sauna on in there. What else is there to do? Talk about hell on wheels. Whew!
When we finally arrived at our hotel in Treviso, dripping with sweat,  Bri and I went for a run around the adorable little town and caught a glimpse of the area. As luck would have it, their was a festival going on that weekend! Score!
Later that night we all headed down there for some food! Lights were strung across the pathway from tree to tree lighting the way and lighted musical notes hung from them. Food booths lined the pathway. The choices were endless and it was hard to decide: Italian, Spanish, Oriental, Slavic, Greek and more. I was exhausted from the day's journey and it was sweltering hot so I retired early after choosing some grub and browsing the booths.
The next day we would take our bus to a ferry that would take us to Venice and our first stop was a genuine Venetian glass blowing demonstration. Legit stuff here, people! Ultra impressive, and of course we all spent a few too many euros buying jewelry and glasses for ourselves, family and friends.

Once we finished at the glass factory we hoped back on our ferry to the main island to met another tour guide. This poor guy had his work cut our for him. It is sweltering hot already and it's only noon. It was so hot the tour guide didn't feel much like guiding. One of the group's favorite stories is reenacting when the tour guide paused mid sentence to catch his breath.
Guide: "Over here is the Castle de... (pause, long exhale)... Excuse me, it's just so hot!"
Oh, it's a knee slapper every time! About ten minutes later, he'd given up on us and turned to us and asked if we'd like to take a break and grab some gelato. Well, of course! I couldn't tell you one thing about Venice aside from the fact that it's beautifully constructed. Venice is the first image that pops into your head when someone says Italy- the tiny canals filled with gondolas and gondoliers surrounded by narrow streets and tall, colorful buildings. It's an adorable city! Venice is a step up in beauty. The buildings literally sit in the water and the canals flow through the city, in and out of a larger body of water.

Trying to capture narrowness of streets

Scuola Grande di San Marco

St. Mark's Basilica... I think :)

St. Mark's Campanile

 

Gelato! :)

In St. Mark's square there is Doge's Palace, a bell tower and unlimited shopping surrounding the area. The square is rather large and packed on this day. Again, I apologize for not paying more attention in such a beautiful city. We split into groups for our gondola rides. This was the most breeze we caught all day. Our gondolier sang a little but nothing thrilling. I didn't mind because I felt so awful for the guy navigating around in that heat.
After the gondola ride we still had three hours to kill in Venice before we caught the ferry back to Treviso and the hotel. We had tickets to the museum so Bri and I thought we'd attempt to find coolness inside. At this point all the girls claws came out and the heat made us all a bit catty so most of us split of from each other. The guards wouldn't allow you inside the exhibits with backpacks and it seemed like a hassle in the heat so Bri and I found seats on some stone benches at the end of a breezeway. The benches were a Godsend. Somehow in that sweltering heat, there was enough shade here and it made the concrete benches cool. As hard as they were we laid across them and napped on and off for the next hour. I'm sure other museum guests found this entertaining or tacky. We feared a guard shooing us off so we migrated to the outside in the land of pigeons.
I don't know what Venice has that no other city in the world does but I have never seen so many pigeons in all my life. They herded in the square and people were feeding them and touching them. They are apparently unaware of the fact that pigeons are simply flying rats and filthy creatures.
Finally it was time to meet and go back to the ferry and back to the hotel. I've never wanted to get on the bus more quickly than I did in that moment.
After the heat exhaustion set in from the day I refused to leave the hotel room once we returned.
Tomorrow we head out of Italy to my favorite stop!