One Week in Italy

As I have been planning for our trip to France, I remembered that I had not completed penning down our experience in Italy. So.. taking up after 2 days in Switzerland , early morning on our 3rd day in the European continent, we took the EuroStar to Venice. It was a 9 hours journey. I remember watching the landscapes changing from the white mountains to brown smaller mountains to flatlands.

And this was our next 9 days itinerary for Italy....

Leaving our hotel in Venice

2 days in Venice: 

Venice is a city of 120 small islands with over 400 bridges linking them. One of them is the famous Rialto Bridge, iconic to the city. We took the vapporatti from the train station to our hotel stop. The directions to the hotel (@Citta di Milano Hotel Venice, Venice, IT ) which we had from the website, was only with "lefts" and "rights". It seemed pretty strange to us that there were no street names, till we actually got on to the island. It was a labyrinth of small lanes and smaller alleys. It had a village-like atmosphere, with very close quarters with clothes hanging from the windows, shadowing the cobbled streets.There were children playing on the streets.We found people chatting, laughing and being merry around each corner. We could hear a violin playing somewhere far. We had seemingly travelled back to the medieval age. After freshening up a little, we started out to explore the San Marco square.

DAY 1 : SAN MARCO SQUARE VICINITY

the streets of Venice

The St Mark’s basilica at the square was closing at around 6pm, so we were already late. For us the only sought after artifact inside the museum was the table used in the Last Supper.

The square was very crowded with thousands of people and thousands of pigeons. A big cruise ship had docked at the Venice port. We also saw the Bridge of Sighs. We stayed out late, on one of the benches, and saw the sun set over the Mediterranean. The pigeons slowly  outnumbered the people around us, and then as the birds also gradually disappeared, we decided to call it a day.

Rialto Bridge

DAY 2 : RIALTO BRIDGE AREA

Next morning, we were out to explore the Grand Canal. After a gondola ride, lunch at a cafe beside the water, two gelatos at a gelataria under the Rialto Bridge, a quick trip to the Murano island, and shooting hundreds of photos attempting to bring back home exact memories of how beautiful the place was, our stop in Venice had come to an end.

Worth mentioning, we did strike a deal for a half hour 30 euro gondola ride at the Rialto Bridge stop (as suggested in one of the many blogs I had referred to before.)

The Grand Cana