A trip to Venice

We had two and a half days between the time Nathan's mom flew out of Zurich and Stefan had to take a train to Paris, so some of us decided to go to Venice. Nathan, Nicole, Stefan, David and I piled into Sonya and Thomas' car for a six hour drive to a little coastal town called Lido di Jesolo. We got there in the evening and checked into our great hotel, which we got for a pretty good deal since it's not high season. Lido di Jesolo is obviously a hopping beach town in the heat of summer, but in rainy May, it looked abandoned and closed down. Only the occasional restaurant was open, and the beaches had empty lounge chairs for as far as the eye could see. We chose the town because it was so much cheaper than staying in Venice, and I really liked the few minutes we spent walking on the beach in the evening and the next morning.
We took a boat to Venice the next morning, and the round trip tickets we bought included unlimited access to Venice's public transit system (called iMOB), which of course is boats along the canals.
Venice was so Venice, with gondoliers in striped shirts singing as they worked and a labyrinth of narrow streets that dropped off into canals. It was full of tourists, and everything about the city seemed to exist only for tourists. I don't think there's any other industry there. We spent a few hours at the Basilica San Marco, which had stunning mosaics covering every inch of its ceilings. Even after a few hours, we didn't feel like we really saw everything. We had lunch in one of the more quiet piazzas; we ate pizze and panini and drank espresso. I really liked all of the little shops full of beautiful glass made in Murano (an island in the northern part of the city). Another big thing in Venice is hand painted masks, which were also lovely. We spent a good part of the afternoon riding boats along the canals, and we took one boat to the cemetery, which is on its own island. Apparently bodies buried there only remain there for a certain amount of time before they are cleared out to make room for new ones. The graves were all really elaborate, with some small buildings housing a whole family.
We took a boat back to the Canal Grande, and as we drifted by one of the balconies we spotted Johnny Depp standing on one of them, filming what we later learned was a movie called "The Tourist." I look forward to watching it when it comes out next year - what an exciting celebrity sighting! Earlier that day we also watched a Bollywood movie being filmed in the Piazza San Marco.
We went back to Lido di Jesolo for dinner and our hotel, and I ate pizza for the third time in 24 hours. And in no way was that depressing.