Second Day in Venice

July 22, 2012 - Venice Day 2

Our hotel had a very grumpy front desk attendant. Steve said that he must be French cause he wouldn't greet anybody, didn't look you in the eye and in general had the attitude of "why are you bothering me with your presence"! Lol But the hotel was really nice and right next to the train station with easy access to the downtown "buses" (boats).'

On our second day in Venice we decided to do more exploring, souvenir shopping and a gondola ride! We started with the exploring. In Venice there is an elaborate system of boat "buses" that you can take from stop to stop just like a regular bus. We took the "bus" some of the time but mostly decided to go on foot to get a bit off the "beaten path". It was definitely worth it. Once we got away from the main tourist areas the streets were a lot more quiet and we discovered many quaint and beautiful places. Here is the sampling :)

The view from the "Bus stop"

Just like the rest of Italy, Venice dosn't lack in churches! We saw many of them and since it was Sunday some of them were holding mass. Each church is diferent. Some stay open most of the time and some have limited hours for tourists. We got "kicked out" of this beautiful church soon after entering as they were getting ready for mass. But managed to take a few pictures :)

This church let us walk in. The mass was already in progress.

More sights of beautiful Venice

We also found some interesting things. Apparently in Venice you can buy anything from bandages to condoms in these little "pharmacy" spots!

Obviously the biggest and most important church in Venice is the St. Mark's Cathedral. It sits in St. Mark's Square, which is the largerst and most impressive square in the city of Venice. The cathedral is very distinct with all the lacy stone work and many gorgeous colors. Since we arrived too late to see it the previous day......we decided to head there now. When we arrived we found out that the line to get inside was humongous!!! In addition, people who were caring backpacks were not allowed in. We were caring a backpack :/ So we were directed to a short term storage place that would hold our backpack for us until we are done viewing the cathedral. After dropping off the backpack we went back to the line and......it seamed even longer. So instead we decided to come back to the cathedral a little while later and in the meantime look for a gondolier......as we wanted to go on a gondola ride before leaving Venice that evening anyway. We spoke to a few gondoliers but they all quoted outragous prices, between 100-150E for a half hour ride!!! We also learned that the cost depends on a group size. The bigger the group the bigger the discount. In other words if you can share the cost with others then you pay less per person. We didn't have a group....it was just the two of us! So we started looking for one. We asked a few people but they were either not interested or already had a big enough group of their own. Finally, we came upon a family of American tourists who were happy to help us. This is how we met Richard, Leilani and their two children. We learned that our new-found friends came from Chicago and were touring Italy for 9 days. They were very nice and invited us to join them on their gondola ride. As they had already purchased their tickets, they showed us where to go to buy ours and as a results saved us a lot of money since we were now going in a larger group! In addition to saved money it was really nice to meet another American family so far from home and to be able to chat and exchange stories of our travels :) Thank you again Richard ad Leilani!!!

As it often happenes in Italy things were a little disorganized and it took a lot longer than anticipated to wait for our gondola ride. As a result, by the time we were done St. Mark's cathedral was closing :( Oh well.....guess we will have to come back there again in the future :)


But the gondola ride was totally worth it!! We loved having this once-in-a-lifetime experience. The ride lasted half an hour and took us through some of the smaller Venice canals (water streets). There was a lot of "traffic". But the gondoliers have amazing skills. We were dumbfounded by their ability to glide past other boats and slip through the narrowest of spaces without as much as brushing a side of a building or another boat. Just wow!

Our gondolier :))

After the gondola ride we had to hurry to make it back to the hotel and then the train station. Our train was leaving at 7:30pm heading to Florence. But we had to take some time out for gelato of course!!

After getting our bags from the hotel we had to hurry. Steve was a little worried as it was getting late and we haven't purchased our train reservations. We already had tickets but in Italy you also have to purchase a seat reservation to get on the train. This is not very expensive and usually easy to obtain. We were told to go to one of the numerous automatic machines to do this. We tried many of them but could not figure out how to get the reservations separate from the tickets. So we ended up having to stand in line to get a person to help us. A bit stressful but we managed to get everything done and got on the train in time! :)

 

Now we head to Florence!! The train trip takes about 3 hours.

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