Population: 280,000
Venice. On our way now. Early train again. we've seen a lot of fog in Tuscany (of which Florence was the capital) low mountains in the distance, some wooded areas, the uze. Venice was actually was favorite part of Italy, not so much for its "famous" sightseeing touristy places like St. Mark's Square, which, though big, was really not too different from other major European capitals, but for all of its more impressive yet non boastful demeanor, the winding little streets with three story ancient houses blocking your view, the little rivers and sounds of water trickling in everywhere, the random pathways that suddenly overflowed onto a nice stepping bridge and you found yourself going up and going down and getting easily lost in the streets full of shops and little street markets and bright lit colors. I was sort of sick all day so I didn't fully enjoy myself, and also after reading the guidebook I would love to go back and go to all fo the little islands because we just stayed on the main one, but apparently there's Lido island which is a beach resort and then two San something islands which one has a former insane asylum turned university and is a jungly climate and the other has temples to the gods and seems very beautiful, at least from the pictures. We didn't even take a water taxi (tourist trap!) so when I go back thats a need as well. Anyways, it was very cool we started off getting lost but seeing the old Jewish Ghetto set up in 1516 by a decree of the Italian duke ruling the area, and they've been there ever since, they expanded to two other parts of the isaldn and now I don't think many jews live there although there were a few shops selling jewish goods, a synagogue with a large exhibit for the public, and some memorials put up to the jews dead in the Holocaust. During the Holocaust the nazis didn't come until late 1943 to round up the jews in Italy and when they came a lot had escaped through the winding water routes, so there wasn't really a systematic evacuation of the ghetto, and the term ghetto applies to its classification from the middle ages. Jews were forced here and forced to be employed in some economic business which eventually led to commerce....not sure, sounds similar tot he Jewish european history trajectory learned in class. But the history of the ghetto was a peaceful one for the most part apart from the obvious fact of lack of freedom of movement. Past there we walked down some winding streets, passed tons and tons of shops and markets selling the masks for the carnival of venise not as many leather goods as Florence, some clothes and random as seen on tv merchandise like a quick cappucino maker and a fruit press, some bakeries and food shops but more so retail items, everyone had these boxed cakes panecote for Christmas, they didn't look super good but literally everyone had them there were millions of these panecote boxes everywhere. We found our way to the Rialto market of fruits and veggies as it was closing, found this square where a guy was selling hot pasta on the street and people were standing in the square drinking wine out of nice glasses..odd because it was freezing and their wine wasn't hot. Crossed the Rialto bridge, a big bridge with a nice view of hte boats attached to their wooden poles, some of which are decorated with rotating dual colored stripes like a barber's pole, also got a good view of the embankments of the grand canal, eventualy found St Mark's square and the Doge's palace, went in St Mark's it was again huge inside bery dark like a lot of churches but had mroe gold, the columns were a lot thicker and the archways where you crossed from one area to another had these bright gold tiles with giant saints arching above you kind of like angels flying because of their curved orientation, I liked it. The Doge's palace was a big rectangular structure looking right out onto the sea with the msot famous coffee shop in one of its little interior shopping ares (the Florian Cafe) very renaissance-esque with angels and cherubs flying everywhere. Speeding up this entry a tad, we walked along the water for a while but lots of fog so hard to see, and cold, eventually found a cafe and sat for a while then went back to the train station and crossed the 4th bridge, the newest bridge built last year its very spacey- futuristic and has a blue electric light on the bottom and curves up, cool though. Sat at the train station and watched "The Lives of Others" in preparation for Germany and got on a night train to Monaco (Munich in Italian- very confusing), put in a cabin with no heat, moved at 1:30 in the morning with our frostbitten toes and all to the entirely opposite end of the train to another compartment, slept in a haze until a knock on the door at 6:30 and we're in Munich. The guy took our passports for border security in Austria and Germany and gave them back at the end, a system I did not like and did not understand because we're all in the EU....these border rules are insane. Then we make it to......
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