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After months of planning, trips to Schengen Visa offices and synchronisation of leave, we finally made it to Italy. We got off to a delayed start curtosy of EasyJet but we got there at last. Our first stop was Venice. It had received rave reviews from a number of friends so we decided to start our trip by spending two nights here. Once we had found the right stop on the river boat and navigated the maze-like streets to find our hotel, we set about exploring the place for the rest of the afternoon. This is St Mark’s Basilica with the Campanile to the right. |
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There are plenty of bridges over the water that offer beautiful views down the canals. The first thing you notice though is that not everything seems to stand upright. |
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It’s quite difficult to describe just how humid it was while we were there. One of our first points of call was to somewhere that would sell ice-cream. Gelato was one of the words we came to use quite a lot during our stay! The building in the background is the Santa Maria Formosa. |
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We spent the rest of the afternoon exploring the city, taking in some of the sites and testing our limited Italian vocabulary. We also landed up eating dinner at a French restaurant (with scary octopus starter snack things) and then wound down the evening hunting for more gelato. This is the Santi Giovanni e Paolo. |
On the Friday we got down to get as much seen as we could since this would be our only full day in the city before travelling to Sardinia.
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We started with a guided tour of the major locations in the city. Choosing to go with a guide was a great idea because we got a little more insight to the place and also got to skip the queues to see inside St Mark’s Basilica. On the left is St Mark’s Clock that tracks both the time and the luncar cycle so that the locals know when the tides will be high. Above are some of the other buildings surrounding the Piazza. Below are pictures of the mosaics of the Basilica and the columns outside the Doge’s Palace. |
And these were taken of the Doge’s Palace on the right of the Basillica.
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From there we decided that we needed to grab some lunch and then escape the tourists for a bit. Nearing lunch time the centre was getting pretty crowded. We had a quick look around the stalls in St Mark’s Square and looked up to see this walkway between two of the buildings. |
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We took a river boat across the water to Salute where we sat on some shady steps for a while. Me standing at the steps of Santa Maria della Salute. Around the corner from this at the end of the Dorsoduro peninsula (called Punta della Dogana) we found the statue shown above of the boy with a frog. |
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Getting away from the centre of Venice was the best part of visiting the city. On Salute and further south we found the most beautiful canals and walkways. There were trees growing in the (empty) squares and we could walk for blocks without seeing anyone. |
| Next we found some more space by taking the boats to the Public Gardens on the south-eastern side of the city. I heart shade!! |
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To round off the day we took a trip to the island of Murano which is famous for the glass made there. The streets are lined with glass shops and there are a few glass sculptures in the squares. |
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This is us on the Ponte di Rialto. We stood on the bridge to watch the traffic - amazing to think that the whole city runs on the water. |
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On the final morning we got our stuff packed up and headed off to the water taxi jetty for the trip back to the airport. This is the view of the Ponte di Rialto from the river boat station. |
Some other photos from the trip…
Next we were off to Sardinia.
