Day 25 – Venice

We arrived in Venice at 9.30 off the sleeper train, glad to have stopped moving even just for a little while.

We found our hotel and checked in early before going out to explore.

There were little shops and stalls everywhere.  The first thing we found were HUGE meringues. It seems to be very much a tourist town. We strolled through the streets, looking in the little shops and stalls. We stopped in a little restaurant for a Pizza lunch and checked out the Gondolas and boats on the water.

I really liked Venice. It was different from anywhere we had seen before and was quite pretty. I was always told that Venice was a smelly place and that there was heaps of rubbish floating in the canals, but this was not my experience at all. There were the occasional smells, and the odd bottle or piece of plastic that has escaped and ended up in the water, but overall it was quite clean, and much much cleaner than Paris.

We walked till we found the Marco square. We thought we'd take a seat in the shade on some lovely steps, only to be told you cannot sit anywhere other than in the restaurants in the square. When we asked about the water coming up and filling the square she giggled and said that this is something that only happens in winter.

I was really needing to use the bathroom so we found the WC. It was here that I spent the most money going to the toilet on our entire trip so far. It was 1.50euro!

We hopped a cross canal gondola and headed back towards the hotel. Here we had a shower and got ready to head out for dinner.

We found a lovely little restaurant and sat for a quite meal. The Moscato wine was amazing, so yummy.

After dinner we went for a lovely gondola ride through the quiet back canals and through the grand canal. The Gondola man was very informative and told us about many different churches and houses along our trip and answered all our questions.

Did you know the water in the small canals is 3m deep and in the grand canal its 6m deep?

We stopped for some ice cream on the way back to our hotel.

What a wonderful day.