Venice

Wednesday: Today we left for Venice. Before Patrick and I left for Venice, we had one last stop in Florence, the Duomo. We didn’t get to check out the Duomo between all of our museums yesterday. The Florence Duomo was pretty, but was the least ornate of all of the Duomos that Patrick and I have visited in the past cities. After heading back to our hotel to grab our luggage, Patrick and I went to the train station to get out ticket to Venice. We got to Venice around 5 pm, checked in (our hotel was super close to the train station), and headed out. Venice is stunning--it is so different not seeing any cars. They don’t even have the little garbage trucks that the small Greek villages had (we saw those when we took our Island Hopping Cruise). We were wandering through the streets, heading for St. Mark’s Square, when we were stopped by a gondolier. After negotiating to a great price (as gondolas go), we went for our canal cruise of Venice. It was so peaceful because our gondolier took us through quiet little rivers (only the three largest rivers in Venice are properly called canals) and pointed out important sights. After our gondola ride, we continued walking to St. Mark’s Square and looking for some dinner. We ate a little café right off of the Square. I had some yummy tortellini with prosciutto and Patrick had a fish, which they wheeled out and took the head, tail and bones out in front of us--cool! After we ate our late dinner, we started wandering back through the little streets and over the bridges until we arrived back at our hotel.

Thursday: Today we were going to visit the main tourist sites. We started out at 8 with a cruise from the train station down the Grand Canal to St. Mark’s Square. We had an audio guide to point out the buildings and churches as we rode. We just hopped on the boat/bus with all of the people heading to work and rode for about 45 minutes. After our ride, we wandered around the Square and listened to another audio guide explaining all of the sights around the Square. We wandered over to the Bride of Sighs and then back to St. Mark's Square. The Square has a clock tower that fell down 100 years ago. The angel on top of the Square managed to land on its feet! After listening about the Square we bought tickets to go to the Doge's Palace and to Museum Correr (a museum of Venetian art and artifacts). We went through the Museum Correr first and then grabbed lunch. After lunch Patrick and I toured the Doge's Palace. It was very beautiful. The Palace is connected to the old prison next door by the Bridge of Sighs, so we go to go over the bridge just like the prisoners. After touring the Palace and prison we went through the Basilica; we paid to climb to the second story which gave a wonderful view of the Square. After touring the Basilica, we did some shopping. Venice is very close to the Island of Murano, so there is a lot of glass work in Venice. Patrick and I tried a creperie and had a crep with chocolate and banana. After wandering around Venice some more and admiring the pretty buildings, we had a lovely dinner. We had prosciutto and cantaloupe followed by crab pasta. After our dinner we wandered back to the hotel. It was a great last evening!

Friday: Today was my last day in Italy. I had a late flight back to the London Stansted airport. However, I didn't have to catch my bus to Treviso airport until the afternoon so Patrick and I walked around downtown. We managed to eat lots of Italian food so I wouldn't miss anything. We finally got to try some olive bread from the bakery we passed everyday. I didn't like it because they put cheese in the bread and made it taste weird. I also had my last gelato. It was green apple and passion fruit. I have to say green apple and passion fruit might be the best combination of gelato flavors ever. It was amazing. And for lunch we ate olive bread with salami--so good! So I managed to cram in the last bits of tastiness from Italy and admire Venice. What hit me today as we wandered down streets was that there were very few trees--no real parks either. However, it didn't feel like New York or anything because everyone has roof gardens and flower window boxes. Everything is very old because the building codes really prohibit anything new being built. I was very sad to leave but I had to catch my bus to the airport and Patrick had to catch his train to Milan.

Ciao Italy!