Venice

Founded in the 5th century and spread over 118 small islands, Venice became a major maritime power in the 10th century. The whole city is an extraordinary architectural masterpiece in which even the smallest building contains works by some of the world's greatest artists such as Giorgione, Titian, Tintoretto, Veronese and others - http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/394

Having been to Suzhou (the 'Venice of the East') and both Venetian hotels in Las Vegas and Macau, we were really looking forward to seeing whether the real Venice would deliver. Luckily, this crazy Italian city managed to blow all of its imitators out of the water (pardon the pun).

It's easy to get lost in the narrow alleyways and unnamed lanes, but it's just as easy to find a sign pointing toward one of the two main attractions - Piazza San Marco and Rialto Bridge.

Piazza San Marco at night

Hmm, I wonder if that cover image was photoshopped?

It was pretty appalling to see such an iconic landmark riddled with graffiti. According to some friends who visited in later months, they did clean it off in the end, but still.

Sometimes you feel a bit silly purchasing useless trinkets from a town just because they're famous for making it, but I didn't mind looking at the cute Murano glass sculptures and grabbing a couple as souvenirs. Surprisingly, some of the best value necklaces we came across was in a store on the Rialto Bridge itself.

Of course, I suppose we could've got ourselves more splatty pigs as well (though we didn't).

Even though the town is constantly heaving with tourists, there are so many laneways it's not hard to get shots with no people in them either?

Of course we couldn't leave Venice without climbing a tall thing to take pictures from the top of, so we went to St Mark's Campanile.

It's worth venturing out at night time as well, Venice is super atmospheric in the evening - I can only imagine how fun it would be during Carnival season!

Finally, some rather... interesting things we spotted in town.

Odd...

Odder...

Definitely the oddest

[Flickr set here]