For Thanksgiving, Alex and I decided to spend a relaxing weekend on the partly submerged islands of Venice. We stayed in an out-of-the-way hotel close to the original Jewish Ghetto. Our first day out, the concierge warned us that there was High Tide meaning, as we were soon to find out, part of the city's sidewalks and piazzas were underwater. After 20 feet I already had wet socks and went on the hunt for rain boots wondering why no one warns you about these things. Luckily, they had built raised platforms in the more touristy areas. Our next stop was Piazza San Marco, home to Saint Mark's Basilica and the saint's resting place. It is a jewel of a church with Roman, Byzantine, and Venetian influences. It is also a reminder of the time Venetians loots Constantinople during the Fourth Crusade. We spent the rest of the day strolling around the city, shopping, eating seafood, and watching A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving.
The next day was much drier and the water levels were mostly back to normal. We took a gondola ride around the city, which was a little awkward since tourists would take your picture whenever you went under a bridge. (But hey, I totally did it too...) After we stopped by a Shabbat lunch at the restaurant of a nice, American Jewish man we had met the night before when we forgot that it was the start of Shabbat or Jewish day of rest. That afternoon we visited the Peggy Guggenheim Collection of modern and futurist art.
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