Italian 1st Course - Venezia (Venice)

After stringing together three cities in a row (Paris, Amsterdam, & Munich), a couple weeks away from the ocean, and, with temperatures across Europe beginning to drop, I set my eyes on heading south to the countryside, coastal waters, and famed history/cuisine of that boot shaped country named Italy!  

In step with my strategy of not back tracking, heading west-to-east and north-to-south across the continent, and chasing what is left of the warm summer I had one more city to visit before truly getting back to the "country"... In Itlay the dinner meal is traditionaly the largest of the day and also comes typically in no less than 4 courses... so, with that being said, here is my Italian 1st Course - Venezia (Venice):

After only a couple hours getting my bearing on this city built on water, and, while surfing the internet at the computer kiosk in my hostel, I struck up conversation with a spunky blonde Aussie girl named Beck.  After exchanging pleasantries, conversing about our recent & future travels, and sharing about our homelands a couple others guys joined the conversation... turns out Tyler and PJ had both studied at the University of Hawaii!  A few minutes later in walks a guy with a striking resemblence to Matt Damon and the name of a famous author - Dan (Brown)... low and behold a crew was formed and we all had a gang to go about exploring the city with!

Add Becks friend Amy to the mix the next morning and suddenly taking a Gondala ride (while not quite as romantic as with your sweatheart) was justified!

As interesting of a place as Venice is... it is not the place you need to spend much more than two days... I bee-lined towards the beach and an area along the Italian Riveria know as the Cinque Terra!