O brother where am I?

Venice:
Ciao from Venecia, so far, our time here has been full of high’s and low’s.
Dissapointment #1:
We arrived in Venice to, you guessed it, more heat. We thought traveling several hours north to the coast would cool things down a bit, but not so fast my friend. But your in Venice, so we managed. Venice is definitely one of the most unique, beautiful cities I’ve ever been in. I’ve always been told it stinks but to be honest, Rome smelled worse than Venice by far.
Dissapointment #2:
After navigating the alleys, we finally found our hotel only to be told we could not stay there. The desk manager was super nice, just told us that their bathrooms were out of order so they had worked it out with another place down the street for us to stay. After talking it up to us, our worst fears were put aside as this is a very nice room in a really good location as well. We don’t get the breakfast buffet we were supposed to get, but so far, the breakfast has been really good. And that leads us to…
Surprise #1:
After our first hotel told us we could not stay there, he told us we were in for a treat as this weekend is Venice’s biggest festival of the year. Festa del Redentore. This festival has been celebrated since 1576 since the cities deliverance from the plague. What does the festival include you may ask? How about music all over the city with dancing in the streets, boats going down the main canal full of people partying, and to top it all off, a 35 minute firework show in St. Marks Square in the shadow of the Doge’s Palace overlooking the Adriatic Sea. The square had thousands of people shoulder to shoulder celebrating (aka drinking wine) and oohing and ahhing at the fireworks (which don’t worry, still doesn’t compare to Thunder over Louisville).
Surprise #2:
Early morning Sunday morning brought a pretty good storm through the city. Which much to our delight, brought cooler temperatures. I’d say we’re now at the average temperature of about 80 degrees or so. Trust me, that is fallish compared to what we’ve had. So we headed out to see the Correr Museum and the Doge’s Palace which was quite incredible. And surprise surprise, one of the things we were excited about seeing was the mural of all the Doge’s with one blacked out because of treason/decapitation (for those of you that don’t know why this made us excited, just refer to the Black mansion in Harry Potter with Sirius’ head blacked out of the family mural).
Tonight is planned with some exploration of the city, some shopping, and the quintessential venetian experience (ok, maybe a strictly tourist thing, but a must I suppose nonetheless), a gondola ride. Tomorrow will quite the travel day as we have a roughly 6 hour train ride up north through the Alps and Black Forest to Munich. Hopefully the trend of cooler weather continues. Till then, arivaderci.


Courtyard of Doge's Palace

Doge's Palace

Doge's Palace

Festa del Redentore

Festa del Redentore

St. Mark's Square at night.

Grand Canal

Gondola

St. Mark's Square