Un'avventura a Venezia!

Two weekends ago, my parents came to visit! It was sooo good to see them! (For one thing, they're excellent travel buddies, and for another thing, they're the only people in Italy who complement my Italian!) They got to spend one day in Florence without me (I was on a fieldtrip to Rome--don't worry, it wasn't actually exciting, although I did learn that hearing about the Italian budget is almost more interesting when you can't understand the language well), and then we went to Venice for the weekend!

Our B&B was very close to Basilico San Marco--which was by far my favorite single thing in Venice. I've seen a LOT of cathedrals and basilicos and duomos and chapels of every size and kind in the past two months, and the only one I've liked as much as San Marco is the Medici Chapel in Florence. Although no pictures were allowed inside, no one could stop us from taking pictures of the mosaics over the door...

We also got to climb up to the little balcony up near the roof, which had cool mosaics, too:

And here's a shot of the parents!


One of the scarier parts of Venice was how clearly it was sinking. When we were waiting in line to visit St. Mark's, there were little makeshift plank walkways set up in the piazza, because the whole piazza was a few inches deep in water. Apparently this happens fairly often, when wind blows water from the canals into the city.


One handy thing about a city on the water is that it's very photogenic, especially around sunset:




That's all I have now; get ready for Geneva pictures next week!!!