The Travels of Eric and Lorna

While waiting outside a shop, I decided to just film people walking by for a couple of minutes.  Ok, look, I'm not Francis Ford Coppola, alright?  I never claimed to be.  YouTube link. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-dxt6cufgA

View of St. Mark's from the bell tower. The famous 'Bridge of Sighs' leading from the Doge's Palace to the Doge's Prison. The street leading to our apartment. The courtyard is behind the gate at the end. Chocolate mountain. The winged lion is the symbol of Venice.  Pretty cool symbol if you ask me. Little meat pigs, presumably pig meat.  You know you want one. Somehow the vegetables at the markets in Italy always look amazing.  Maybe because they typically only eat things in season? Venice's famous fish market. This was a cool 24 hour clock face. One of the wells in our courtyard.  Check out the intricate carving. Shop where oar holders for gondolas are made.  Apparently the guy quit being an astronomer to do this.  I think that's kind of awesome. Hmmm...symbolism maybe?

Here's a link to a video of St. Mark's Square I posted to YouTube. http://youtu.be/K3W1UPorPjY

One of the first things we did in Venice was to visit the Naval History Museum in Venice .  This was a really cool museum.  Given that Venice was a major world power for several hundred years, and the navy had a lot to do with this, and given that the city is on the water, naval operations have been of major importance throughout the history of the city. First off was these cool, huge anchors outside.  Me for scale.  Those of you who know me know that I am not a small guy... The museum had many scale ship models.  These depicted all kinds of ships, even dating back to galleys and other ancient ship types. There were also lots of cool globes. And sea chests. Ship model. Sabres Near the museum is also the entrance to the Arsenale, which was the shipyard where the ships were made.  It's still an active naval base, so you can't go in, but you can see the very cool towers that once held the gates. The entrance to Arsenale. Lion taken as a

To see a longer ride on the Grand Canal, including the famous Rialto Bridge, go to this link http://youtu.be/7CcvPvGkpuo

Hi Everyone, I forgot to post anything last night.  So to compensate, here is a video of a ride on the vaporetto along the Grand Canal.  This was our first ride when we were just getting to Venice.  I have a lot of videos, but unfortunately Blogger has a 100 MB file size limit.  Perhaps I'll put some on YouTube and post links.  More words about and pictures of Venice to come soon.

On Monday the 24th we took the train to Venice .  Train travel in Italy is great. It's cheap and the trains pretty much go everywhere.  The second class seats are large and comfortable.  I can't imagine paying for the first class seats, as I can't think of what would make them worth the extra expense.  Anyway, we arrived in Venice that afternoon. Venice is incredibly photogenic.  It's also a lot larger than I had thought.  It's not huge, by any means, but it was larger than I had expected.  There are no cars in Venice, so it makes walking around the city much safer and more enjoyable than many places I have been.  I was also very surprised at how clean it was.  The streets are clean, and graffiti is minimal.  They must spend a great deal of time and effort cleaning the streets. Venice is also a very well run city, probably the most well run I have been to in Italy.  This is likely due to the massive amount of tourist traffic the town gets.  The vaperettos (