Travel~ Travel~ Venice - 5th May 2008

On the way into Venice on the water taxi.

Overall I deemed this day as disappointing. It was raining from the time we arrived in Venice in the morning until the time we had to leave at around noon. The cold I caught in Rome started to get nasty with me and I was feeling terrible. Then we were almost late for the meeting time to leave because we were lost in the back streets for an hour. The only good thing that happened in Venice was that I found a cobbler while we were lost to mend my boots' heels which got broken from walking in Rome on the 1st day. It costed 6 Euros but well worth it as I felt much more comfortable walking after that.

View from the famous Rialto Bridge.

Shops on the Rialto Bridge.
A raw foods market we found while lost in Venice.

After Venice, it was another 5 hours bus-ride to the Lake District of Italy for the night before heading on to Switzerland the next day. There we found this lake about 45 minutes brisk walk away from our hotel and managed to enjoy briefly the beautiful scenery before dinner. Again, there was nothing else we could possibly do after dark around there...

Food on the road - Ciabata with ham and cheese~ *Yummy*!

The beautiful lake near our hotel.

Travel~ Travel~ Venice - 4th May 2008

Most of today was spent inside our tour bus, taking us from Rome in the morning to Venice in the evening. I didn't really count how many hours we had spent on the road as I was busy playing "Lost In Blue" on my DSLite (hubby's DSLite actually but whatever his is mine~) :p Hubby said it was about 8 hours, including 2 toilet breaks we had along the highway, so I think we arrived in Venice almost 5pm and went straight for the optional Gondola ride.

This time the gondola ride took through some back canals of Venice not usually shown to the average tourists and we got to see how the Venetians live in their habitats on water. We even got to see how they hang their clothes out to dry like in this picture! Suddenly Venice was not romantic anymore... I was glad we weren't on our honeymoon trip, I would be so disappointed with the ride. Two other couples in our tour group were on their honeymoons and they shared a special "Love Boat" with 2 Italian artistes who sang and played some love songs for them. They sang so loudly that all other tour members like us in the other gondolas could hear, so I really didn't think the "Love Boat" was any special.

After the ride, we were transported to a charming little hotel which was outside of Venice. No bathtub, just a small shower unit. Dinner was served in the hotel and at night there was absolutely nowhere to go...