Venice - the Lovely, Gaudy Old Starlet!

Before I (Russ) continue on with our Italian travels I wanted to say how amazingly beautiful Prague is. Despite heavy air pollution, Prague has an air of class and elegance. Prague is filled with tourists, terra cotta rooftops, symphonies and black light theatres. Seeing Prague's castle and learning about Prague's history gave us new respect and admiration for the Czech people. This is one city I wish we could have spent more time in.

Venice brought an image to mind for us: an aged starlet clinging onto her dwindling elegance and yesterday's adornments. The city still possesses a unique beauty which no other city in the world provides; however, many of its buildings are weathered with cracks and crumbling facades. Venice is trying to protect and save its monuments and artworks from the degeneration of a variety of several ailments, like floods, neglect, pollution and salt-water corrosion.

Hundreds of millions of Euros are being spent trying to save the sinking city from an unhabited death. Tides, Venice's steady subsidence and a rising sea level create around 250 flood occurrences in a year. Water bubbles up through drains and sometimes completely covers St. Marks square and many of the low-lying walkways around it. Huge flood barriers are being installed into the lagoon to prevent these floods, but if they fail the city could be uninhabitable by 2100.

With only 24 hours in Venice we spent most of our time along the Grand Canal in the San Polo and San Marco sections of town. Lesley (being a trooper with a strained ankle from dancing at Machac) and I spent most of the day walking through the narrow, windy, difficult to navigate streets of Venice. We spent part of the afternoon observing beautiful and diverse collections of modern art at the Peggy Guggenheim museum which featured works by Picasso, Dali, Bacon, Ernst, Chagall, Miro and Pollock.

At sunset we walked to the famous St. Marks Square and were breathless as we saw the glittering gold mosaics which cover the front of St. Marks Basilica. The square was also packed with tons of the bravest pigeons I've ever seen. They'd actually fly onto the head, arms, and hands of tourists who would stand completely still.

WB = 61 (We are now in Siena about to embark on a 3 day tour of tuscany towns.)
ps. We've added new pictures for Copenhagen, Berlin, and Poland to our online gallery.