Travelogue part 3: Still in Italy

[layla]

Every traveler is familiar with the Bataan Death March part of traveling, when you realize you're running out of time and start trying to cram in every tourist attraction within 20 miles of your current location without regard for daylight hours, weather, footwear or food.

The problem was made worse because by this point, we'd lost the ability to agree on anything. Normally Orion and I get along so well that we hardly seem like a married couple at all (we're very boring, really) but we spent nearly the entire second half of the trip driving eaach other crazy -- no doubt a combination of stress and being in constant contact 24/7.

In any case, we drove from Pisa across Northern Italy to a small town called Treviso, near Venezia (Venice). I think of everywhere we went in Italy, Treviso was my favorite place. It is a gorgeous town that still retains a lot of its medieval character, and it is built in the middle of a river, with channels of the river running around, through and in some cases under the town. Forget Venice; Venice is dirty, run-down and over-hyped. If you want a city on the water, Treviso is much nicer, and cheaper too.


Treviso's city wall and one of the many channels of the river.


Many of Treviso's buildings had remnants of faded paintings on their fronts -- usually so defaced and obscured that it was impossible to tell what they used to be. It appeared that the whole town had been gaily painted at one point, but it must have fallen out of style.


Many of Treviso's buildings actually had the river flowing under them.

We spent one full day in Venice, which was really a little *too* much time in Venice -- it is nice to look at, for a little while, but really, once you've seen one canal you've seen 'em all.


Venice has many little canals, but only one big one: the Grand Canal. And here it is!


Somehow there was something very incongruous about this woman's combination of burka and camera. I suppose tourists are tourists no matter what country they're from.


A gondolier! But he wasn't singing. We opted not to take a gondola ride; it was very expensive and it looked like you could see just about as much by walking around.


Typical canal scene.


Police boats!

It's getting late and I need to make dinner and sleep, so I'll finish this up later. Still to come: Munich.

Comments

[trishalynn.livejournal.com]

I think the police boats are my fav. of your Venice pics. It brings a whole James Bond-like movie to mind.

[laylalawlor.livejournal.com]

Oh, you would not BELIEVE how many times we made refences to Bond on this trip. The trams in Switzerland and the windy mountain roads really set us off. :D

[goraina.livejournal.com]

i am LOVING this photo tour so far, layla. :)

[laylalawlor.livejournal.com]

Yay! Thank you! ^_^ I'm enjoying putting it together -- it's the first time I've sort of sat down and gone over the trip in my head. It was all a giant blur for the first week or so after getting back.

[goraina.livejournal.com]

i think my fave photos so far have been the german alps. MAN i want to go there!

[tinpan.livejournal.com]

You know what's ironic? We did the whole Bataan death-march-tourist thing when my family toured from Manila to Vigan City in North Ilocos, a 20-hour round trip, in one day- which just happens to cross the Bataan March route (we even saw a monument to it).

[laylalawlor.livejournal.com]

HAH! That's too funny! I mean, clearly the Bataan Death March wasn't funny ... but that ... that is funny. :D

[dewgeist.livejournal.com]

Wow, thanks again for the virtual tour of the old world sites!
Yep, we is here, huzzah! We have been for almost two weeks now and have toured the hot springs, the museum at UAF, downtown and, of course, the comic shop...Not quite in the same league as Firenze, Frankfurt or the Swiss Alps :P
Lemme know when you guys would like to get together...IF you want to that is. ( I know...we moved up here just to harass you. I'm not paranoid one little bit-eh?) It would be cool to know one or two people up here. I feel like we have "WE'RE NEW" stenciled to our foreheads