Acqua Alta in Venice!

Tara and I stayed at an albergo (hotel) in Venezia (Venice) last notte.  Our albergo was on the Grand Canal.  Here is a vista of our room from across the canale, with our finestra (window) circled:

We were right next to a traghetto station, which is where you go if you want to take a little boat (traghetto) across the water quickly.  Across the canale, there was the fish market.  Here is the vista from our finestra:

The uccelli on the building next door were fake.

We went up to the roof but it was too scuro (dark) to get a good picture.  But here is the stairwell:

And look!  It's our ceiling:

We headed out to explore.  We found a used bookstore that had gondole (gondolas) everywhere:

In Italy, people like to set up elaborate presepi (creche scenes).  We found a stall where you could buy things to outfit your presepe.  See the little man roasting maroni?

Some of the streets were all lit up:

We ate at a little osteria:

Some cibi (foods):



Verdure miste (mixed vegetables)

Gnocchi alla gorgonzola

Spaghetti alla seppia nera (squid ink)

Later, we had cioccolata calda here:

These were on the walls...

...and these were on the counter:

We walked around a little bit.  Here is the Ponte di Rialto at night:

And some more of the Grand Canal:

Questa mattina (this morning), we were planning on going running, but we got outside and the way we had meant to run was allagato (flooded).  Then we ran in the other direction and it turned out that that was allagato too.  We ran for a minute in a different direction and gave up because of all the stinky puddles.  It turned out that the alley beneath our finestra was also allagato:

On the bright side, Tara found this faccia in the bathtub:

We took the traghetto across the canale...

...to the fish market:

Venice was in aqcua alta (high water).  Everyone was wearing stivali (boots).  Some were big and ugly like these:

We went to la Piazza di San Marco (St. Mark's Square).  Here are some foto of acqua alta there:

The piccioni were bedraggled:

There was acqua alta near the Rialto as well:

 Here is a short video of more acqua alta:

Here is a leone di San Marco:

Here's another one:

Here are more foto di Venezia:

Ciao tutti from me, Bridget!