Thoughts on Venice

Venice is a wonderful city to visit if you have a sense of direction.

Here is a map of Venice:



This is not a real map. Actually, I drew it. But I think that this map would be just as helpful to a person trying to find their way around Venice as the map our hostel gave us was. I went to Venice a couple of weeks ago with my sister Sarah and one of her Frisbee friends and we got very very lost. And it was not fun lost, this was more, “if I can't find the station in 5 minutes I'm going to miss my train and damn it, we've passed this bridge 10 times!” lost.

Hydrophobes (people who are afraid of water), should not visit Venice. While stumbling around in the dark after dinner on our first night there Sarah and I found a lot of dead-ends. Dead-ends in Venice are different then dead-ends in other places, though. In Venice instead of a brick wall or a fence blocking your way, often times there is nothing but a canal full of water of undetermined depth. You will turn a corner confidently expecting a street or bridge and—SUPRISE! Water. If you don't maintain constant vigilance, it would not be difficult to just step off into the icky canal water. We almost did it a few times and we were only there for about 24 hours. If we had stayed longer I'm sure one of us would have drowned.

But Venice was pretty fun before the whole lost thing.

We went to San Marcos square and fed were attacked by pigeons, tried on masks, and had lunch at a canal-side cafe.





The pigeon thing was definitely my favorite part.

Ornithophobes (people who are afraid of birds), should not visit Venice. The pigeons in Venice are not more afraid of you then you are of them. If you are holding bread or if you look like you might be thinking about holding bread sometime in the future or if you happen to be standing outside these pigeons will find you and land on your head.

If the pigeons in Venice could be taught to detect illegal substances instead of bread the drug trade would collapse. No one would make it past the pigeons. Also it would be funny to see people swarmed with pigeons in airports. Pigeons are funnier then dogs.