A Weekend in Venice - Day2

(This is the second of a three part series - Day 1 can be found on Chantal Gardner's blog http://www.onebigyodel.com)

What I really love about Italy is the sensory overload – every where you look there are sights that amaze, sounds that delight, tastes and smells that entice you . You need to be an energizer bunny on steroids to be able to take it all in.

Day two of Venice started out on a slower note however, with a quiet breakfast at a secluded (yes it is possible) café. We took to water taxi from Ferrovia to Accademia, where we ambled down the by lanes of Dorsoduro to the Peggy Guggenheim museum.

This is one of the quieter, classier parts of Venice. Small boutique stores and art galleries can be found all around. This is a great place to buy (if you can afford it) an original work of art or a souvenir that is not your run of the mill, murano/Chinese kitsch.

The Guggenheim museum itself was one of the more fun museum’s we’ve visited, simply because you never know what you are going to see next. From the quirky (Yoko Ono’s wishing tree in the courtyard) to the awesome (Giacommetti sculptures) to the inexplicable (Max Ernst), the place gives you a great introduction to the work of abstract and surreal art.

We walked down towards San Marco plaza from the museum, and began to get a true taste of how much of a tourist magnet Venice really is. Wading through the snap happy hordes however, allowed us a brief prelude from the sheer impact of of the cathedral as we approached the entrance of the square.

 As with the Sistine chapel in Rome, every cliché was true. Awe inspiring. Breath taking. Simply magnificent.

We sat at Florian’s in the square and watched the sights around us to a cup of choco café and the violinist playing in the background.

Beauty held us and a passionate energy bound us, along with thousands of others, as there was nowhere else to be but in the moment.