Took way too long to get this post up.  But anyway, I went to Venice last week to visit Sarah Kark! Venice is really beautiful and totally bizarre.  There are no cars in the city, everything is serviced by a network of canals and footpaths.  The architecture was a refreshing change from Rome because it incorporates many eastern influences, specifically Istanbul, the former Constantinople which at one time was the capital of the Roman Empire.  

The following is something I wrote in my journal the morning I arrived and I think it describes it well:

The streets wind like a maze meant to be navigated only by locals.  Paths onto alleys onto canals and dead-ends.  I sit on a platform.  To the left, a canal.  In front, one of hundreds of foot-bridges.  Locals pass by about their Saturday business.  Tourists stop for photo-ops.  Gondolas drift by at their leisurely pace.  Lovers sit, side by each, heads on a swivel.  The music of a piano floats down from an unknown place. Ragtime? In the distance a single church bell. I imagine the windows above hearing its call every morning for innumerable years. Clothes flutter on their line. Whites.  I’m reclined reading Calvino.  This is something new.  Everything is turned to music.

Tumblr was annoying me by resizing my pictures so I have posted them in a series of posts below.