After having a great time in Paris, we boarded an early morning flight and flew over the snow-clad Alps to Venice. The flight duration is a little over an hour and offers spectacular views of the mighty Alps.
Around landing time, you can see lots of tiny islands and it’s fun trying to spot the island of Venice. From the Marco Polo Airport, we boarded the Alilaguna water taxi(public transport, also the the most reasonable) to the Venice San Marco stop. The journey is about an hour and though slow and boring initially, offered dreamy views as we got closer and the first glimpse of the islands around Venice was simply stunning.
A normal day in Venice.
The Hotel Serenissima was a charming boutique hotel with an old world feeling.It was convenient to get to from the water taxi stop and the main square. There are a ton of bridges in Venice and poor M had a tough time trying to maneuver the large suitcases on each one of them.
The Campanile tower and the Entrance to the Basilica
A cross section miniature of the basilica in the musuem.
View of Piazza San Marco
The view from the viewing platform of the Basilica.
The St Mark’s Basilica (The Church of Gold), our first stop for the day, is a gigantic structure forming one of the sides of the Piazza San Marco. They did not have any audio or guided tours that day, so we ambled through the church and took in the beautiful hand painted mosaics and byzantine architectural designs and structures. The museum at the top of the basilica opens into a viewing platform overlooking “Piazza San Marco” or the St Mark’s Square. This structure is simply gorgeous and the museum was extremely informative.It also had english captions and that made it very easy for us to appreciate the historical artifacts.
A trip to Venice is incomplete without getting lost in its web of tiny streets.While walking around and exploring Venice, we stopped by Amorino to try the coffee and chocolate flavored gelato. Call me amateur, but I have never been able to differentiate between the an ice cream and a gelato.However, this was truly flavorful and the texture was extremely creamy!
Venice is a unique, pretty, dainty little city. Not smelly and dirty as people have described it to me, but beautiful and romantic.
Later in the evening we visited the Rialto Bridge. It is one of the prettiest bridges in Venice.
The pretty view from the Rialto Bridge!
We strolled around San Marco Square, which is lit and heard a beautiful live orchestra, and proceeded to the waterfront which is completely lit up.
Piazza San Marco lit up in full glory, a live musical performance at the San Marco Square
The next morning we went to the Doge(Ducale) Palace.This is another of the top attractions around Venice.I strongly recommend getting an audio guide to enjoy any historical place .With ceilings made of a real gold and draperies imported from all parts of the world, this was definitely the place to be in the 1800s.
After the palace, we walked over to the other side of town and boarded the water taxi to Murano. Murano is famous for it glass blowing factories .That is literally the only art/business that keeps this city going.So much so, they even have a gigantic glass blown structure installed in the center of the town.
Glass blown garden outside a glass blowing artifact shop.
This town had a very homely feeling, everyone knows everyone and the polite and warm waiters/hosts ushering you in to their restaurants/cafes. Being vegetarian, we always had to make sure we would get good options and people have very kindly responded whether they would be able to accomodate us or not. We had an amazing lunch of pesto pasta gnocchi and topped it of with chocolate cake .We walked around town and saw a beautiful glass blowing demonstration. Glass blowing literally blows your mind. 😛 . Next we boarded the water taxi to the island town of Burano. This one particularly stands out because of its beautiful and very very pretty colored houses.
Colored houses in Burano
They are also famous for its lace.We visited the lace museum where we were promised a demonstration of the manufacturing of laces, but that isn’t true.I was a little disappointed. We returned to our hotel later that evening. Having walked around for almost ten hours, my feet couldn’t take it anymore.
We took the water taxi early next morning to get to St Lucia for our train to Rome.
The view from our water taxi stop at 6am.
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