After a long train ride from Sorrento (about 7 hours), we arrived in Venice and it was raining 🙁 Luckily it was forecast to be sunny for the rest of our time in Venice.
Our hotel here is in a nice semi-residential area and has a lovely courtyard which is nice to relax in after wandering around Venice all day.
Venice is the way I remembered it, with it’s small narrow streets/alleys sometime leading to dead-ends/canals, lots and lots of bridges and the smell (it’s like a fishy, oceany, sewage smell all mixed together).
We found a really nice takeaway Pizza shop here, which was perfect for lunch (and reasonably priced). Our daily gelato tradition from Sorrento has been continuing here, but still no luck in finding any cannoli other than the Sicilian type (which is a ricotta cheese style filling. Might have to wait until I’m back in Oz for the creamy chocolate fillings….mmmm 🙂 )
One day we took a ferry trip out to the islands of Murano and Burano. Murano as you would know is where the glass factories are located, and we spent a couple of hours looking in shop after shop after shop at hundreds of glass creations, some very expensive and way outside our price range and others much more modest but still equally as beautiful. Afterwards, we took the ferry to Burano, which is a nice residential island famous for it’s lace making skills. It was also the most colourful island we saw (and the cleanest/best maintained island)
We also visited the Rialto Bridge, Grand Canal, many streets, alleyways and bridges and of course St Marks Square –
where we ascended the clock-tower for this view over the islands –
One afternoon we took the ferry to Lido, which is a long island on the edge of the Venecian lagoon that fronts onto the ocean. It’s also the only island in the lagoon which has roads, cars and buses. Lido has a couple of beaches, some of which are accessible to the public, but the water was a bit cloudy when we visited and we hadn’t brought our swimmers, so no swimming here.
This morning when we left Venice to go to Pozza via train, the Venetian Public Transport service was on strike (we had no prior knowledge of this and hadn’t seen any printed signs up advertising this previously). As a consequence, we had to walk 45mins from our hotel to the train station with our bags in the hot sun. Not happy Jan… 🙁
Currently on the train from Venice now, on our way to Pozza for a few days. Looking forwarded to catching up with the relatives and seeing The Dolomites again.
Ciao
