Tag: venice

In Venice I’ve felt like a tourist every day, due to the whole place being oriented towards tourists, but today my friend Daniel (also most recently from California) arrived in Venice, so, after a great calzone for lunch, we set out to see some of the more poplar sites which I had avoided until now. We start with the Basilica dei Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari church, which is just two blocks away from my hotel, and has a pretty good free audio tour through Rick Steves’ Audio Europe app. Lots of pictures are taken, apparently a bunch of work by famous sculptors and artists. I particularly like the lazy lion. The winged lion is a symbol of St Mark, the patron saint of Venice, so shows up everywhere, including the flag of Venice. Continue reading “Tourist in Venice”

Thursday through Sunday update. Quite a few quiet days. I’ve been enjoying doing a little bit of sight seeing (usually just as I seek out an interesting place for lunch) each day, and spending some time working, and a lot of relaxing before my upcoming whirl of activity. I have had very poor luck finding any kind of cafe in which to get work done – all of the ones with good views along the canals are expensive, and all outdoor seating, so quickly get either too hot or too cold depending on the whims of the Venetian weather (it’s been almost 80 one day and cool rain the next), and most of the others have rather uncomfortable seating, so I have resigned myself to my hotel room for doing work in Venice. I’m definitely going to book a desk in a “coworking space” when I roam over to Rome in a few weeks.

Continue reading “Venice Life”

Overall, a couple lazy days, with some time to do some work on Splody.

I do a little exploring on my first full day in Venice, deciding to head over to a church which has a flooded crypt you can tour. On my way, I pass through Campo di San Marco (“St. Mark’s Square”), the biggest tourist hub in Venice. It is full of tourists so I run the other way, but not until after grabbing a shot of the front of Basilica di San Marco. Continue reading “Venetian Wanderings”

In the morning I board my 6 hour train trip from Zermatt to Venice, with just one transfer near the beginning of the trip, so most of it is spent comfortably in the high speed train going from Brig to Venice. It is a nice train, and my Eurail pass gets me first class seats which are even better. I finally get a few hours to just spend working on Splody so do not notice much of what the train passes by, though a lot of it is in tunnels or through uninteresting urban areas. In the afternoon I am greeted with my first sight of Venice, and the city is covered in clouds, and being rained on, which I later deduce must happen a lot of days in the early afternoon, but it is pretty clear by the time I get off of my train, onto the city, and walk a bridge across the Grand Canal.

Continue reading “To Venice”