Tag: venice

So we headed to Venice for our second time, but this time with Nat and Mark who had never been before. I wasn’t sure how Rach and I would go as Venice is a small place and there aren’t they many huge landmarks or big sights to see. The first time we came to Venice we were blown away by how amazing it looked taking a Vaporetto (water bus) all the way down the Grand Canal through the centre of Venice. They say it a lot about other places but there truly is no other place like Venice.

Continue reading “Venice Carnivale”

So I’m finally in the fatherland 🙂 Our propellor plane in here was quite scary. At one point Rach and I looked forward at my hand gripping the chair in front and saw perspiration from the nerves in droplets on my fingers. We spent the first day here at the camping resort. This place is heaven compared to a hostel. Lots of nice trees everywhere and a pool, restaurant, shops and bar. We spent a fair bit of the afternoon in the spa just relaxing getting ready for the foot pounding over the next two days.

Anyway, we headed into Venice (the locals call it Venezia) and took a vaporetto (water bus) all the way from the top to the bottom down the grand canal, the main canal that seperates the main area of Venice. Well what can I say other than wow. It’s a spectacular ride and goes under the famous Rialto bridge. This is one of few places we’ve been too where I could just sit back and watch. The place is really quite amazing and looks stunning in many places. Seeing all of the buildings end and drop straight down into the water everywhere is just very different to every where else. I’ve taken so many photos over the last two days. More than at the Star Wars exhibition 🙂

One thing I wish we could see is the Venice Carnevale. The masks and costumes that go with it fascinate me so much. They look unreal. Unfortunately the carnival is in February. I would love to come back and see it. For some photos of what I mean check out:

http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=venezia+carnevale&m=tags

All in all, we didn’t do much sightseeing at all but it felt like we did heaps. We did loads of walking around and weaving in and out of the hundreds of alley ways. On our way home to day we managed to walk from the bottom to the top of the main area of Venice and walked through areas where there was not a single tourist in sight. Today the vaporettos went on strike, luckily we caught the last one to the bottom of Venice, San Marco. This was good because the St Marco Piazza square which on our first day was full of people meant that today it was much quieter. It was also bad because we didn’t get to go to the glass art making island of Murano, where they make lots of stunning glass pieces.

Well what can I say Venice is such a beauitful city 🙂 You could sail up and down the grand canal all day and not get bored.

The first thing we did on our second day was catch a water bus to San Marco, there were hundreds of people there and even more pigeons! We pretty much spent the whole day walking around San Marco looking at all the little stores and yes Jo the jewellery was pretty impressive! And I liked all the Murano glass stuff too. I must of went into 50 stores even though they were all selling almost the same thing, I could look at it for hours.

We thought it looked like fun to buy some corn kernals and feed the pigeons and oh my god they love it! It was kind of strange at first having all these birds all over you but you get used to it. We got lots of cool photos of that.

We then caught the water bus to an island called Lido but as soon as we got there we realised we had to be back in an hour to catch our shuttle bus back to the place we’re staying at so we pretty much had to leave as soon as we got there but it is still nice to ride on the water bus and look at everything.

Today we went back to San Marco and went into St Mark’s Basilica. It is such a beautiful cathedral. I still find it hard to believe that all these amazing churches, buildings, castles etc we are seeing were built hundreds of years ago without machinery. They are so huge and have so much detail, every one we see I’m just amazed by.

Oh and today when we went to catch a water bus and realised that they were on strike! But luckily Venice isn’t that big so we were able to walk to nearly everywhere we wanted to go. Except we weren’t able to go to Murano to see the glass making 🙁

We had lunch at a restuarant in San Marco, it was 15€ for a 3 course meal but it was pretty crap I thought. I must say the food I’ve experieced in Venice is pretty average, I’m hoping Rome and Florence will be better.

The place we are staying at is great. Its about 15 minutes out of Venice but its really spaceous which is great cause we’re used to being confined to a hostel room. They also have a pool which Adrian managed to get me into yesterday!! I’m sure he’ll mention his disatisfaction about the time the pool closes 🙂

We fly out to Rome tomorrow, our shuttle bus leaves at 6am which I’m not very happy about! That means we have to get up at 5.15 noooo!!!!