It's Raining, It's Pouring...Venice, Italy

We took a bus trip to Venice during the Carnival of Venice 2013. Our hopes were high that we would see lots of costumes and people in masquerade attire. However, the rain downpour kept all those pretty costumes hidden inside. 

Despite rain, Team DeLeon knows how to have a good time. We made the best of our 1 day in Venice by starting with a boat ride into the heart of the city.

Our first sight on this cold and rainy February day

Warm gear and umbrella: check

We took a short walk heading toward Saint Mark's Basilica and found our first waterway street.

Venice at its finest

 And we found this cool looking statue and our family business.

Statue

This must be the Italian way to spell DeLeon

Next, we stopped by the Ducale Palace and decided it was too rainy and cold to wait in line to see the inside, so we headed to St. Mark's Square instead.

Ducale Palace

St. Mark's Square

We were able to go into St. Mark's Basilica and into the treasury room. It was really pretty inside, but no pictures were allowed.

Outside St. Mark's Basilica

In St. Mark's Square we also saw this famous Clock Tower.

Clock Tower

After our fill of the square we headed to the Rialto Bridge. First, we stopped to warm up though. We had some excellent Italian pasta (yummy) and wine (which really did warm us up). Once we made it to the Rialto it truly was everything Shakespeare said it would be :)

Rialto Bridge with a Carnival of Venice 2013 sign

On the Rialto Bridge

On the Rialto

Once we saw the Rialto we realized we forgot to take pictures of the Bridge of Sighs, so we headed back to St. Mark's Square and the Ducale Palace to see the Bridge of Sighs. On the way we bought another umbrella because one just wasn't cutting it for us any more.

The other side of Venice (we didn't make it over there)

The bottom of the Bridge of Sighs

The top of the Bridge of Sighs

A blurry Bridge of Sighs at night
(clearly we were having bridge picture taking issues)

Legend has it if you ride under the bridge in a gondola with your lover then all of your dreams will come true. Too bad it was so rainy that no gondola's wanted to take us for a ride :( 

Once we saw all of these main sights we headed to another restaurant to warm up. This time we ordered pizza with our wine. Again, the food was really delicious and so was the wine. We walked around for a bit more, but it was just so rainy and cold that when we saw the Hard Rock Cafe (even though we weren't hungry), we made our way to a tiny taste of America.

The Hard Rock Cafe in the distance

After spending several hours in the Hard Rock a drunk German couple sat by us and insisted on Justin wearing their Carnival mask. So naturally, we took a picture.

Justin and his Carnival of Venice mask

Finally the time had come for us to part ways with Venice. So we headed to the boat that would take us back to our bus for the 9 hour ride home to Grafenwoehr. Before leaving we said good riddance to our Paris umbrella (sad day) and the other cheap umbrella we bought from a vendor, because they were so beat up from the wind and rain. 

Peace out umbrellas and Venice

As you can see there were a lot of other people who had to get rid of their umbrellas too. There were even ruined umbrellas lying all over the sidewalks. What a trip!