There is SO much to tell about our trip to Italy, that I can’t do it in one post, so I’ll start with our first stop – Venice! We stayed in Venice for the first 3 nights of our holiday. On our arrival at the airport, we made our way to the “taxi stop” to get to our hotel. However, they are not ordinary taxis in Venice. It’s a city built on water – canals and bridges criss-cross every few feet and the streets are narrow and cobblestone, and well….there are no cars to be found! So – we boarded the Water Taxi and headed for our port.
Once we arrived at our port, we still had to walk to find our hotel – which normally would not be a problem, except that we had no map, it was POURING rain, and we had our 30kg packs on our backs! But…we were in Venice! So we were happy, and we sloshed our way through the rain and the maze-like streets until we arrived at our hotel about an hour later. We later realized (once we had a map of the city) that the walk was only about 15 minutes from the port!
Our hotel was in a great location, close to the popular “Rialto Bridge”, and our room overlooked one of the canals so we could open our windows to see the gondolas and boats below. It was wonderful. I’ve heard that “Venice can be stinky” but it wasn’t when we were there. The water is kind of murky/green colour in the canals, but we never saw any garbage or smelled anything bad.
I loved Venice! It is so different than anywhere I have been before. I think because I love the water, I just liked being surrounded by it. We walked all over the city, and our first day out we almost walked right into Yoko Ono! She was coming out of a restaurant with some people and swept right past us. We also went to a couple of little islands off of Venice – Murano (where the famous Murano glass is from, and we watched them making it in the factory there), and also Lido, which was a quaint pretty island that I liked a lot – we stopped by the beach there too, which is on the Adriatic Sea.
We also went to see the Peggy Guggenheim (sp?) collection at her museum, and I also chased all the pigeons away in Piazza San Marco (the famous “square” you see in movies quite often where it’s full of pigeons and people). And one afternoon, Rich and I just stayed on a water taxi for an hour or more and did a tour of the grand canal – it was a great way to see a lot of sights. Great stay, great hotel, great food, great first leg of our trip!
Here is the link to our Venice photos on Kodak Gallery:
http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=jzztdya.7ypd769e&x=0&y=p6h630&localeid=en_US
I will post on Florence – our next stop – as soon as I can! Ciao.
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It is one thing to read about Venice, another to totally be there to capture the beauty, and the wisdom such an old city has to offer. The pictures of the canals, and the crumbling of the buildings, and looking at the gondolas, almost put me there too. Just loved that you had this opportunity, and could appreciate every thing you were able to see. Wonderful! mom
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