This is my favorite photo of our trip to Venice last March: My brother’s hands caught taking a photo of the Grand Canale as we were standing on the Rialto Bridge. I’ve been meaning to share the best of my Venice shots all this time, and now that I’m a bit incapacitated with my hip problem, I finally plowed through the photos, edited them and picked the best. With such an extraordinary location as Venice, it is truly hard to weed out photos. Another impetus to finally get these photos sortedĀ  (eventually it all gets done, doesn’t it?) is that my mom’s birthday is coming up again in March, and I’d like to give her an album of the trip. After all my siblings and I traveled with her to Venice last year to celebrate her 80th.

Venice is a city where you walk a lot, climb up and down bridges, take fun water buses, or wait around on floating bus stations.

I had been to Venice before; in fact, it was the first trip my husband and I ever took together, for New Year’s 1985/86. My main memory is of the horrid shared bathroom in the cheap hotel we stayed in, and that it was cold, particularly on St. Mark’s Square. I don’t haveĀ  good pictures from that trip, but here’s one of me bundled up:

I also remember hanging out at the sumptuous, opulent, expensive and arrogant Cafe Florian under the Colonnades on St. Mark’s Square.

This must have been the thickest, most delicious hot chocolate I’ve ever had.

My aunt Herta would say: Three men in a boat (although here I think one of them is a girl).

Of course, back in 1986 we rode a gondola (it’s romantic, after all) but I mainly remember it being cold!

What impressed me most on this trip, what has stuck in my memory, was that unique combination of Venetian red on the walls of the city and the bottle green of the water.