Venice

 Leaning Tower of Venice...??

We stepped off the train in Venice to extreme humidity. Steve lined up to get a ticket for the next stop, Florence. Some people are so rude , two people literally stepped in front of him, but he made sure he still got to the counter first..onya Steve!!



After getting the ticket we thought...now how are we going to get to our hotel...Taxi? No taxi signs..Steve said, "I'm not sure they have taxi's here..."ha! of course they do" I said. Off I went to the information bay, but it was closed as it was Sunday..apparently tourists don't need info on a Sunday! Anyway I went to the shop next door and the woman asked me which hotel we were staying at..I showed her my book and she said just go across the bridge and turn to your left and it's just there. Cool! I thought and went to tell Steve. He wasn't so sure as he thought our hotel was further away..."Well that's what she said, let's go!" So we walked up the path a bit and found the bridge across the Grande Canal, it was a very large bridge with lots of steps. But, we made it the other side, sweating and hearts beating really fast! We couldn't find the hotel so I went to another hotel and a guy, who wasn't very happy with helping me, told me our hotel was on the other side of town. I went outside and explained this to Steve, he wasn't happy and told me he couldn't go back over the bridge. However there was no other choice. There we went to a taxi boat and the driver told us it would cost 60 Euro ($102) to get where we wanted to go...by then we didn't care, we just wanted to get to the hotel and hoped they had airconditioning. It was a pleasent trip in the taxi and we got to see a bit of Venice from the water.

The bridge we had to lug our suitcases over, notice no ramps!

When we arrived at the stop, the driver pointed to the road (corridor) that we had to take to get us to the hotel. With map (that the other hotel had given us) in hand we set off. It was really hard to follow the map as not all the roads were marked. Finally after quite a while we found a glass door with the name of the hotel on it...there were no other signs that this was our hotel we could have walked right passed and never have seen it. Yes! There was airconditioning!!!!

Me looking hot and bothered in the taxi

The following day was just as humid, and there seemed to be millions of people in this very small place. We took it pretty easy and went back and forth from the hotel to keep cool in the aircon. We weren't having a very good time at all! Gondolo - we didn't take a ride!

The Plaza

The next day was alot cooler after overnight rain and we decided to take a trip to Murano where they do the glass blowing. We had been offered a free taxi to the island the day before so we went and found one of the guys giving them away. We had a good trip and found out why they give the free rides away, they try and sell you some really expensive glass after you've seen the demonstration. Eventually the guy took us to the cheapo room and we bought another paperweight. Then we took another boat to the island of Burano where they mainly sell lace. It was all very nice but we didn't buy anything. Both these islands were very quiet compared to Venice, so we stayed as long as we could and got the boat back which took about an hour and a half.

 These photos were taken on Burano, love the colours!

 Steve on the phone talking to Kym on Burano

The following day was cooler again so we just went walking to some interesting places that were not as crowded. We found an old building that had an art display and went and had a look. Very interesting.

One of the many small streets

Steve with a rather large beer

Our last night was spent eating at one of the very expensive restaurants and then going for a walk to the front area where all the larger boats come in and took a few photos. So it ended up being an interesting place and it was good to see how these people live without cars or bikes.

Now off to Florence.....