Ahh... Venice

Here I am taking the ferry on a dismal day into Venice for the first time since I've been here. Most people rode down below, but I decided to brave the elements in the hope of getting a better view of the city as we approached. Oddly enough, there was a Korean couple up there who were kind enough to take my picture. Good thing I learned two words in Korean! "Hello" and "thank you" can take you a long way.

Once I landed in Venice, I embarked into the city. Not a block from the ferry stop, I crossed over a beautiful old bridge that spanned the "Grand Canal". It gave me the perfect vantage point to snap this obligatory Venice shot.



Another view from the bridge.



Not sure what that building is, but I caught it from the opposite angle when I was at St. Mark's Square. This was taken right at dusk, and I think it came out quite well. There were some noisy Germans with what was probably $5000 worth of camera equipment taking this same shot.



Here's a gloomy back canal off the beaten path. There was no one around when I took this picture and the city was silent as a tomb, even though it was a Sunday afternoon and there were 1000s of tourist not half a mile away. I wish I had some HDR action on this picture.



Finally, St. Mark's Church. This doesn't really capture the scale of the church or the square that it sits in. Massive. I was trying to get a close up of some of the detail that is on the front here. Inside is even more impressive, but alas, no photography allowed. You'll just have to take my word that it was one of the most impressive things I've seen. Every square inch of the interior was coated in gorgeous mosaics depicting saints, Christ, disciples, etc. The ceiling was mostly gold and the floor was marble. But all of it comprised of thousands (millions?) of tiny squares that made up these images. Truly humbling.