Christmas in Venice

Ok, I know most of you would immediately jump at the chance to have Christmas in VENICE! However, I had a difficult time dealing with the fact that it was still the same three people without our family or friends.

Don't get me wrong though, it was amazing! We sat by our little tree and opened our humble pile of colorful lumps ( the presents themselves did not quite resemble the clean wrapped boxes you would expect ) and ate the special Italian Christmas bread we got. Beautiful bells rang throughout the day and the peaceful silence of the city was wonderful.

We took a gondola ride through the small, twisted web of canals that wove their way through the island city. While walking on the sidewalks of Venice the world around is beautiful and sturdy but when you are in the gondola (which is amazingly comfortable) you see the bottoms of the buildings from the vantage point of the water. Cracked, wet and covered in barnacles, the whole city seems as though it's about to collapse in on itself. It has been standing for hundreds of years though and the ride was spectacular, we passed other gondolas with as much People as they could carry (about four) it really felt as though we were in medieval Venice in our elaborately decorated vessel gliding across the smooth blue-green water.

My mom was ruminating about what we should do the night of Christmas Day after our extremely fancy Christmas Eve dinner at Riviera ( a really nice restaurant with lots of seafood) so she found a concert of Vivaldi pieces and bought us tickets. It was very fun and we heard all of the four seasons and a traditional song that is to be played on Christmas Day.

Yes! Christmas in Venice was just as fun as everyone expected.

Love to you all,

Willa Marie