Upon arrival in Venice, we wrestled with the throngs of people to get water bus tickets and finally boarded about 40 minutes later. Once we got to our stop, we didn’t have too much trouble finding our apartment. We only asked three people, which, in Venice, seemed pretty good. A lady was waiting for us there, but she only spoke Spanish! My brain hurt.
The apartment itself was really cute. It was in the attic of the building, so Randy had to duck, but there was a lot of floor space. There wasn’t a true shower in the bathroom, just a hand-held faucet in a big tub. Randy had to sit and I did yoga moves to get all clean. We slept with the windows open, but were kept up by folks on the street and a crazy bird-monkey noise. Here’s what we tried to sleep through.
Anyway, after dropping off our bags, we went back to the water bus and used it as our tour boat. It ended up taking us much further than we expected, so it was a great trip. The water was beautiful and all the buildings were stunning in their history, but man, there were tourists everywhere! I’m glad we saw Venice, but not sure if I have to go back.
We hopped off the bus on a whim and ended up enjoying ice cream drinks and watching cruise boats leave as the sun went down (touché, Venice…touché…).
Afterwards, we wandered through the streets and found a place for dinner. I tried a tagliata, a local steak dish, but it was cold. Not my thang. Randy had a sea bass – eyeballs to fins, and really enjoyed it. (Side note: it made me smile to see that Randy and I don’t even need to talk to know what the other is thinking. The folks at the table next to us ah, had walked a little too much in the sun with too little deodorant. Randy and I had a whole conversation about it without saying a word.) After more wandering, we found our apartment again (in the dark, go us!) and stayed up a bit doing laundry again.
Since there was so much noise, I got up around 5:30am and saw one of the prettiest sunrises I’ve ever seen. So pretty, I almost woke up Randy. Instead, I went back to bed and slept until 10. Oops.
Randy was his fantastic self and got breakfast while I did my contortions in the “shower”. When we left, we took the water bus to San Marco Square, where we toured their basilica while mass was going on. That was neat. This one got the Donald Trump award – it was the same huge scale as the others, but done in half-inch tiles…most of which were gold. Wow.
After that, we wandered through more alleyways and bridges. We found a great spot for our last Italian meal of the trip and a pretty glass bracelet as a souvenir. We stumbled into one more gelatoria where Randy had berry and I had meringue. Or tried-it fell off my cone about five licks in.
We walked some more and even took a taghetto gondola so we could say we’d been in one. After a stop at an amazing looking chocolate shop and a bar for a “spritz”, we got our stuff and started our trip to the airport. It took a hot and stinky bus and boat, but we made it earlier than planned which figures since the plane to Basel was delayed.
I enjoyed Italy a lot, but with all there is to see in the world, I don’t think I’ll need to rush back. Both Randy and I think Rome was our favorite place. I think that’s because we saw un-touristy areas, too.
I didn’t forget the pictures. Here you go!
