Is this really my life?: Venice Italy, What I know...

Venice, Italy

This weekend we went to Venice, while I acknowledge that Venice is a beautiful city perfect for pictures, I have quite a few gripes. Most of my issues deal with the cleanliness of the city. The logistics of a city with canals instead of streets might be enough for most people to overlook the trash and scum, sorry I give no allowances. The Italians are not known for their cleanliness and a city with no grass full Narrow streets packed with tons of smoking tourist could only be made worse with dogs. Yes I know that lots of people are dog lovers the Europeans most of all but when walking down a concrete "street" barley wide enough for two people to pass, the last thing I want is a dog urinating on the side wall, which really just means on your feet. I know that even in areas with plenty of grass dog owners are required to carry those little bags with them, but let's face the truth not everyone uses them, now let's go back to a city of concrete with narrow passage ways. You use your imagination.

A few shots of the narrow streets

All that being said we did take some great pictures and see some fun things. But even after a short trip in Europe it makes me realize I might not say it enough but I am very happy that we fly a red, white and blue flag outside our house!

Sam on the water fromt

Canal and boats

Us on one of the many bridges

Canal

Canals

Tower in St. Marco's Square

View from the top of the tower in St. Marco's Square

A Chagall at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection

Another beautiful canal

These are pictures taken in the jewish ghetto, in the 1500s Jews were forced to live in this square they could go out during the day but at dusk they had to be inside the gates that were locked and gaurded by Christian gaurds. At one time there was over 5,000 people living in this confined area, therefore they had to start building up. You can see that in this area are some of the tallest buildings in Venice, if you look closely you can see that the windows are smaller on some floors the ceilings on some of these stories were very low, again to fit more living space for people. As I am sure you can guess the Jewish ghetto area was used again during the 20th century. One of these pictures shows some barb wire still in place and by just coincidence some Italian army members. The book said there are only about 35 Jewish people living here today, very sad.