Sunday in Venice

We had a fun Sunday, wandering the streets, really alley ways, of Venice the entire day. We took a water shuttle from our hotel, and saw several processions of palms for Palm Sunday. Many people had olive branches instead of palms.

At St. Mark's Square we fed pigeons and learned about the Basilica San Marco which was built in the 9th Century to house the body of Saint Mark. We also learned about Murano glass which is made in Venice, and saw an antique market at Campo San Maurizio.

We went to an exhibit of musical instruments dating from 1580-1965. A focus of the exhibit was also Antonio Vivaldi, a famous composer who was born in Venice in 1678. He was a priest and spent most of his life teaching at Ospedale della Pieta, which was a State run school for orphaned girls. At this school the girls were only trained to be excellent musicians. The girls were said to sing like angels, and all of them could play multiple instruments, including some unique and uncommon instruments. Most of the girls spent their entire lives at the school.

We set the gelato record today with 3, and we've decided our favorite flavor is Fior di Latte. We also rode the carousel at Campo San Polo 4 times, and played on the playground at the public park with some local kids. There were alot of kids around today, riding bikes, scooters, and rollerblading. Lots of Fun. We've decided that Dean and Connor would make excellent gondoliers for halloween.

We have a busy travel day tomorrow. We are getting picked up by water taxi at 5:30am to go to the train station. We plan to spend tomorrow afternoon in Innsbruck, Austria and then arrive at our hotel in Germany later in the evening.

Ciao from Venice, Italy