MONDAY 13 JUNE –VENICE, ITALY
We headed off just after 9.30am this morning to drive to Venice. It is a long trip of about 500kms but we had all day to do it and see a large part of Italy along the way. The Tuscan countryside is just so beautiful and certainly lives up to all it is talked about and photographed. We didn’t stop off anywhere on the way, we just wanted to get there and so we pulled into a roadside food stop for lunch and then continued.
We finally arrived in Venice about 4pm and parked our car in the secure long term parking then down to the water ‘buses’ to take us to the Rialto Bridge where we were getting off to then walk to our hotel. I had been to Venice twice before but for the others it was their first trip and we were all wow’d by what we saw. Venice truly is an amazing and unique city, it is also so busy and there are so many people despite having a population of about 60,000 but I reckon at any given time there are probably almost that many tourists too!
It took us a while to find our hotel because of all the lanes and the fact they hadn’t really given us a very detailed address or directions. We asked someone in a shop and they called the hotel and then we were directed. They had messed up our rooms and despite booking 2 rooms and letting them know that we had 4 children, they had arranged for our 2 rooms to be on different floors. We messed around for a while sorting out the rooms and since our 2nd room wasn’t really adequate, they promised to move us to another room tomorrow, however our main room was lovely, large and a nice view of the canal.
Corky was like a school kid as we headed out to look around and find dinner. All the laneways were crowded and busy and there are just so many shops you could never possibly see them all unless you were here for quite a while. We found the Hard Rock Café for dinner and then continued walking through St Mark’s Square for a while after dinner. Venice certainly is a visual feast for the eyes and Corky has now listed it as his most favourite city – hard to beat really.
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| One of the many mask shops |
TUESDAY 14 JUNE –VENICE, ITALY
We made sure we were up in time for breakfast in the hotel. After breakfast we thought we would go on a gondola ride and commissioned the man out the front of our hotel. We went for about ½ an hour around ‘the block’. We saw where Marco Polo is buried and also where Casanova ‘the lucky lover’ as our Gondolier put it, lived. Our Gondolier is a 3rd generation gondolier and said that there are about 450 gondoliers in Venice. Every 3 years Venice is sinking by 1cm and you can already see where it has started to go under.
After our gondola ride, we wandered back through the laneways looking at the shops, dodging dog poo and wee until we got to St Marks Square. We decided we had walked quite a lot so we went to the wharf to get a ‘water bus’ to take us on a round trip along the canals. Great way to see the city and rest our legs. We ended up being on it for more than an hour because it stopped at every single stop and then we went out into the open water and back around to the Grand Canal. By the time we got off again at St Marks Square, we were happy to be back on stable ground, legs were certainly rested.
Tonight we headed down to the waters edge to have dinner at a restaurant overlooking the expanse of water off Venice and also all the people walking by on the waters edge. As we were approaching the restaurant, we came across men selling the copy handbags on the streets and it was a very proud moment when Corky negotiated a great price (about 15 Euros each) for Madi and Sophie’s first Prada handbags! They proudly displayed them as we entered the restaurant and sat with them at dinner though there was a crushing moment when Madi asked what Prada meant! A quick lesson made everything OK again.
After dinner we wandered again and headed back up towards St Marks Square. It was a full moon and therefore this created a higher tide than normal. This in turn made St Marks Square start to flood. The water was seeping up though porthole covers in the ground and flooding everywhere. You could see the water bubbling and at the edges of the mini lakes, the water was slowly creeping further and further afield. Where the ground was slightly higher, little islands were created here and people chose to sit on the ground here, marooned by the rising waters. It was extremely fascinating and hundreds of people gathered around to watch the spectacle. The glamorous outdoor cafes on the edges of St Marks Square where you were served by waiters in dinner suits and bow ties, continued to charm people with their string band as though nothing was wrong. Almost seemed like a scene from the movie Titanic where the band were asked to keep playing whilst the water swirled around them and the ship went down. Thankfully Venice wasn’t going to be submerged tonight, it was just another full moon and a temporary big water problem, by the morning all will be back to normal and gumboots could be packed away again.
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| Harry in the Ferrari shop |
We did consider earlier today having a drink prior to dinner at one of these outdoor cafes whilst being serenaded by the string band and the kids, to their little hearts delight, could chase the pigeons in the square, however when we enquired about a drink, firstly the price for a beer and glass of wine was exorbitant as we had expected, but it was the fact that you had to pay 6 Euro per head to have the privilege of listing to the band – that would be an extra 36 Euros on top of our bill just to hear the music if we all decided to have a little aperitif before dinner. We laughed that off and decided that we could certainly hear the band without paying for it, we just didn’t need to sit at the café to do so.
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| St Marks Square |
WEDNESDAY 15 JUNE –VENICE, ITALY
Today after breakfast, we decided to explore the area around the Rialto Bridge. We meandered through the laneways admiring yet another area of shops that we hadn’t yet explored. It would seriously take you weeks to explore and get to know all the myriads of lanes and shops in Venice. We got lost a couple of times and wound around and around but that was OK, we weren’t on a mission to get anywhere at any particular time. We found a shop that sold soccer paraphernalia and we bought Jack a pair of Italian soccer boots. The temperature however was quite hot and the sun directly on us was becoming unbearable. We sought shade as much as we could.
We finally reached the Rialto Bridge which was swarming with tourists and shoppers. We just window shopped on the way up whilst dodging people coming down and trying to keep an eye on the kids. Once at the top, we admired the view from both sides of the bridge up and down the Grand Canal. We had a few photos taken and then headed off to have lunch on the edge of the canal looking up to the Rialto Bridge. I have really taken to the delicious Olive Oil here in Italy. I love the fresh bread that comes with each meal (as it did in France) and then I smother it in the delicious Olive Oil and a little salt. It is truly delicious and I have vowed to buy great quality Olive Oil once back home. A bit of Olive Oil a day is meant to be very good for you, so that’s how I justify it.
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| On the Rialto Bridge |
After our lunch, we continued our trek around the lanes heading back towards St Marks Square and our hotel however we managed to get extremely lost along the way and we ended up at the bus/car/train station where we arrived. We had walked for a couple of hours by this stage and were very tired so we got one of the lovely water taxis back to St Marks Square. The water taxis are a lovely way to travel the canals, standing up in the back of the boat admiring the views whilst we cruise along. Once we docked at St Marks Square, we stumbled back to our hotel for a rest for a while. It was great to put our feet up and enjoy the air conditioning.
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| St Mark's Square |
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