The Many Merchants of Venice on Day 8

Again parents, be warned: your daughters did a TON of shopping today in Venice! If you have never been before, the city is a maze of alleys, canals and storefronts built on a wood-pillar island. While our guide Tomo told us you can't get lost, you definitely can get misplaced! And for many of our girls, that happened in the shops :)

Overall, they seemed pretty happy with their day in Venice

MSU Denver Roadrunners softball in front of St. Mark's Basilica. June 19, 2019.

But let's start at the beginning.

We woke up in Padua, had breakfast in the hotel and loaded all our luggage on a box truck that delivered our bags straight to our new hotel in Trieste. We then walked about a mile to the train station and boarded a 2-hour train for Venice.

Arriving in Venice was everything you imagine. Step out of the train station and you are immediately struck with canals, ancient buildings and a smell that is a mixture of ocean, bread and many years.

View of Venice from the train station stairs. June 19, 2019.

Venice dates back to the mid 1st-century when the first church was dedicated in 421 A.D. It is a city comprised of 117 islands with over 420 bridges connecting them together. Honestly, it's an architectural marvel. The foundations for each building is simply made of wood pillars (alder wood) driven into the muddy ocean floor. The wood does not rot because it was not exposed to oxygen as it was driven into the ground, and over time it has become petrified because of the high mineral content of the water. Simply amazing. The city does however sink 1-2mm each year.

Anyhow, it's takes about 45 minutes to navigate through the labyrinth of shops, churches and homes to get to the city center -- and that's if you don't stop along the way. We had about 4 hours to explore the city, so we broke up into smaller groups and took off!

Here are some pictures from our walk to the city center (St. Mark's Piazza):

The most famous thing you get to see on the way to St. Mark's is the Rialto Bridge -- the oldest of the four bridges that cross the Grand Canal.

Rialto Bridge. June 19,2019.

The city center is known as Piazza San Marco (St. Mark's Square) and is home to the St. Mark's Basilica, campanile, Procuratie Vecchie, Dodge's Palace, and prigioni nuove (the new prison). Here is a slideshow of just a few photos of this incredible space -- make sure you click the arrow on the right to advance to the next picture.

Once in the square, there are a ton of ways to get a taste and feel for Venice -- shopping, eating, touring St. Mark's Basilica, ascending the clock tower to get an arial view of the city, and of course, riding in a gondola through the canals. Here are some highlights from those activities:

Campanile Views:

One of the most neat and unexpected things we got to see today was a flyover by the Frecce Tricolori, which is the aerobatic demonstration team of the Italian Aeronautica Militare. The timing was extremely fortuitous, as the coaches happened to be in the clock tower when the flyby happened and were able to get a video of it!

Gondola Ride

Many girls took advantage of the hot day and spent 30-60 minutes on the canals. We thought you might like to see a quick time lapse of what it is like!

Here are some more images from the gondola ride:

A couple places of note can be spotted while on a gondola. The first, and most famous, is Ponte dei Sospiri or the Bridge of Sighs. This is a fully enclosed bridge that connects the prison to the Dodge's palace. It got its name because it is the last view convicts would get before their imprisonment or execution. The other is the home of Marco Polo...which we found with little trouble :)

After a day of sightseeing in Venice, we navigate our way to back to the train station, and jumped on a train to Trieste where we will be staying for the next two nights. We had dinner in the hotel and all made it to bed at a reasonable hour in preparation for our game tomorrow against the Italian National Team.

First pitch is at 6:00pm Italy time (10:00am Colorado/9:00am California) at the Stadio Softball G. Gregoret facility only about a mile from our hotel. This game will be MUCH DIFFERENT than our previous games while in Europe. This Italian team will be in the olympics next summer. In fact, last month they played the USSA Pride of the NPF and lost very close games -- so we have our work cut out for us tomorrow night!

As usual, the game will be streamed via twitter at @RoadiesSB so follow along as we close out the softball part of our trip in Europe tomorrow night!

Ciao!