Italy Trip Day 7 - Venice

We left Tuscany this morning and drove across the country to Venice. As you may remember, Nicole and Mason have already visited Venice last fall, but since I hadn’t been able to go, I still really wanted to see it. The beautiful weather from Tuscany followed us, and it was sunny and 80 during the late afternoon. After our arrival in Venice, Nicole and Mason crashed in the hotel room, and I headed out to check out the town for a few hours. After just a few minutes of walking around, I was very glad we decided to make this a stop on our trip. There has been no other city we have visited that quite compares with it – the whole city is just a slowly decaying and sinking piece of art. I probably took 200 pictures in the two hours I was walking around by myself.
In the evening, we took Mason to his favorite place in Venice – San Marco Square and the throngs of pigeons. Nicole can barely stomach to walk around the place, as tourists voluntarily let pigeons land on them and eat bird seed (wisely spiked with pigeon birth control) out of their hands. To Mason, however, the fun never ends in San Marco Square. He could stay in the square chasing and feeding pigeons all day if we let him. At one point, while he was feeding the pigeons, a pigeon flew up and landed on his shoulder. You should have heard the squeal of terror from Nicole, “Brian, get them off of him!!!” It was hilarious.
We found a nice place for dinner, and then as always had to track down a gelato place afterwards so Mason could have his “special treat.” We found a gelateria, but unfortunately the gelato tasted like shaved ice with food coloring added (not that Mason minded) and was still incredibly expensive. Not a perfect ending to the day, but still a pretty good day nonetheless.