August 14, 2004
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HI FROM VENICE ITALY!
Well it is BEAUTIFUL here in Venice! Just a short flight from Nice airport, it feels like it is a world away. Did you know that this city is floating on a lagoon? I thought they dug out the canals like they did in my neighborhood of Venice, California – but no… the entire city is like 100 different little islands floating on pine logs (they do not rot because there is no oxygen where they sunk the piles.. some of the pine logs are 1,000 years old) and the canals go between the different islands, and the entire city is floating! It takes a lot of work to do that! I couldn’t help but look at the big chunk of land before the bridge that takes you to Venice and think – hmm why didn’t they build over there? Anyway, it’s beautiful! They don’t speak english here – or french – or spanish – ARRRGH so I’m back to feeling like the foreigner again – (oh by the way I can speak French pretty good now!) So get this – to get to our hotel, we had to get a taxi from the airport to a WATER taxi – total trip! And it only cost about $120 euros to get to the hotel! (about $160 USD) No wonder there are no americans here! (these are I think Koreans in this gondola – no relation): 
It is a photographer’s paradise here – check out this IR image of a gondola on the water (taken with the Nikon CoolPix990 IR conversion). 
