Thursday, June 29, 2017

Navigating In Venice (and Is This the Best Gelato?)

We were together as a big group during most of our time in Venice.  At some point a big group split off to see the Rialto Bridge, I joined the group going for a gondola ride, and after that everyone else wanted to go back to the hotel, and that left me and Fred in search of the amazing gelato place that John had found.  There wasn't a line, so Fred negotiated with the lady, who let him have four flavors in his two scoops.  But then he had to try to choose:

Decisions, decisions!

I'm not going to say the choice was easy, but I did make it: baci (chocolate hazelnut) and pistachio for me, please!

It was delicious.

Then we needed to find our way back to our awesome hotel. Prof Yasha chose this place wisely and with us in mind.  Venice is confusing to navigate; it's easy to be right around the corner from where you want to be and not realize it.  So we knew we could always find our way back to the hotel by following signs to Piazza San Marco and regrouping from there. 

Then Fred and I saw a sign like this:

Um...

It makes logical sense now. Since San Marco is straight ahead, it doesn't matter if you go right or left, both parallel streets are going in the same direction, so they are both correct.  But this sign gave us momentary pause and we even got out my paper map. (I could have turned on my GPS on my phone, but I wanted to try to figure it out ourselves, my lousy sense of direction has not been improved by the GPS in my pocket!)

Fortunately, we weren't far from the Piazza. Fred helped a nice family have a photo that included them all and the gorgeous background.... 
made some pigeon pals...

And we went back to the hotel.  Getting ready for dinner, I peeked out my window to take a picture of the view and got a bonus shot of Kristopher and Jocelyn!
Look at that.

Wow!


No comments: