European Vacation Day 5 - Venice

Our legs are quite sore today, I think it’s the DOMS kicking in from Rome two days ago, when we spent around 9 hours walking in total. Yesterday was only about 5 hours walking. I hope our legs get used to this quick!

Another day at the office

On the Rialto bridge, highest point in Venice

After brekkie we got the bus into Venice. We walked though the town to the Rialto bridge, and from there to St Marks Square. We then went for a gondola ride and had to wait a while for our turn. The smell at this little basin was really bad, but after a while we got our turn. There were six of us in the boat and it was fun traveling down the narrow canals between peoples houses and restaurants. We eventually emerged into the Grand Canal and traveled along it for a while before returning to the starting point. One of the people on our gondola was a guy called Glen who was from Newcastle in the UK originally but has lived in Sydney for 16 years. His accent was seriously messed up!

Gondola ride

On the Grand Canal, Rialto bridge in the background

After the gondola ride we had an hour to kill so got some lunch with Andy and Wen E. The food was good but the service was truly appalling and I was pretty disgusted by the behaviour of the staff. At one point one of them stopped a couple passing to try to get them to eat in the restaurant. He completely blocked them and they thought he meant the lane was closed so walked back the way they came. The staff then all had a good laugh about it.

un cavallo!

View from the Campanile of San Giorgio Maggiore

After lunch we went to a lace museum which was very nice but more like a sales pitch. After that we went to a Murano glass factory to see some glass blowing where the guy made a Ferrari horse in about 30 seconds!

The Bridge in Front of the Bridge of Sighs

Me, the Doge's palace & the Campanile

We then went out on our own and visited St Marks Basilica which was quite dark and gothic inside and very different to St Peters yesterday. We went up the Campanile and got some amazing views of Venice. We strolled around the shops and ended up at a small bistro where we had some wine. Again the service, while friendly this time, was quite poor. The girl forgot she was bringing us our bill, then took ages to bring me my change.

The flag of Venice

Water, water, everywhere

By then it was time for dinner so we crossed over into the area called Cannaregio. Venetian house numbering is mental. All the houses in an area are sequentially numbered, rather than by street. We managed to find 4582 Cannaregio, but it was not as veggie-friendly as we had been led to believe. Not to worry though as just round the corner we found a nice restaurant and had a great pasta meal.

Move along, nothing to see here

Down a lane opposite the restaurant I had seen boats passing so we investigated and found it was a dead end with a little jetty on it. We got some great canal pics using our new Gorillapod (thanks Edinburgh Airport!). Then we went home, exhausted and ready for an early night. It’s now 10.30 and I am still writing so that didn’t really work out.