Bonjourno.  Monday is already over here in Venezia and it has been another relaxing day.  We have gotten most of the touristy stuff out of the way and are taking relaxing trips to other places in the city.  Today saw us visit the Lido.

For those of you who don’t know, the Lido is the beach for Venetians.  It is an 11 mile sandbar island located opposite the Venetian Lagoon from Venice.  On the other side of the island is the Adriatic Sea.  We took a vaporetto from Accademia to the Lido, and got off.  We immediately noticed a major difference from Venice: There were cars.  These were the first automobiles I had seen in Italy.  I was quite excited!

We walked from the vaporetto stop towards the beach.  We came to the main road that runs along the beach and started walking down it.  We couldn’t see the beach along the road, but we stopped at the major beach hotel on the island: The Grand Hotel Des Bains.  The hotel is famous for its filming during the movie “Death in Venice”.  Unfortunately the hotel was recently closed and is being renovated into condos.

We then headed for the public beach access and arrived on the sand.  We were actually at the beach! In Winter! In Venice!  It was a pretty wide beach, but didn’t have much wave action.  Being January it was empty, but I can only imagine the crowds in Summer.  Dr. Ron Schroeder took us to the beach part in front of the hotel.  The hotel had over 100 cabanas for its customers.  These were all lined up in rows in front and it would have been terrible to have a back row cabana.  After the beach, we walked along the beach road and arrived at an old Jewish cemetery.  Men had to cover their heads and if they didn’t have anything to cover it with, they were given a kippah to wear.  Luckily my friend gave me a hat.  The cemetery reminded me of the kind of cemetery you would see in Charleston SC or Savannah, GA; one covered in moss and tall mossy trees.  It was quite beautiful.

We took the vaporetto back to Accademia and went our separate ways for lunch.  After lunch we watched part of the film “Death in Venice” before class ended around 4.

Me and two others then decided to head for Chiesa di San Rocco, which is known as Venice’s “Sistene Chapel.”  We had fun walking and getting lost, but we never found the actual church.  We eventually made it to the island we thought it was on as it got dark, but we were driven away by blue police lights.  We thought we would only see one police boat, as we only saw the lights on the canal.  We turned the corner and saw four police boats.  We crossed the bridge and were passed by policemen with full bulletproof shields and they seemed in a hurry.  We decided that it would be best to turn around.

We went back to the hotel and the group went out to dinner around 7:30.  I had ravioli and some gelato before returning back to the hotel where I am currently blogging.  THe group is debating if we are going to get up in the morning to watch the Alabama-LSU National Championship game.  Who knows what we will do.

Tomorrow should be an interesting day.  We are doing a tour of Venice’s Jewish section known as “Il Ghetto.”  It is in fact known as the first ghetto in the world.  The ghetto is on the exact opposite side of the main island of Venice, so it promises to be quite a hike.  A few of us might try to climb St. Mark’s Campanile to see the wonderful view of Venice as well.

The activities are starting to slow down, and while I am enjoying Venice, I’m beginning to get more excited about the rest of my trip.  We have seen most of what Venice has to offer and it makes me excited to see Florence and Rome.  For all of those in America, I hope you have a great night and enjoy the national championship game.  Ciao from Venezia

PS Here is the link for pictures from The Lido

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