March 20th

St. Marks Square, Byzantine Basilica, Doge Palace, and the Bridge of sighs are just some of the things I saw today. St. Marks square was nice but not particularly phenomenal. The Basilica however was beautiful even if I only got to see it from the outside. Italy sure has a copious amount of churches. They are beautiful though. The doge palace I did actually get to go inside of it was ornate and heavily decorated with frescoes and architectural carvings and other assorted embellishments. One of the passageways is covered entirely in gold well the ceiling anyhow. The bridge of sighs was built as a way to transport the unattractive prisoners out of the castle while not having them in the view of the visiting nobles or the duke. A dark dank and rather long tunnel is what composes the bridge of sighs. A Poet who was rather imaginative thought up the prisoners sighing as they looked upon Venice for the last time well the bridge is completely enclosed so that doesn't quite fit but the name stuck anyhow. We took a private boat to Burano which is a small island of Venice but away from the crowd and the noise and the canals off by it's self. Burano is a fishing village where the men would go out to fish and the women would stay on the island and make lace by hand. The buildings are all painted different colors, it looks like something out of a story book, and very few people very few tourists, some small cafes shops and then homes. There are two different speculations as to why the buildings are all painted different colors. Are they painted different colors because each family had its own color and when each new family came onto the island more and more colors where added? Or were all the buildings painted different colors so that the men could see their house when they were away? Well in my opinion I think each family had their own color because not all houses can be viewed from the sea, it just makes more sense to me.