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Published: August 13th 2007
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The journey Begin's
At our first stop,gatwick airport to catch the bus to stansted where we had to sleep on the floor and wait for our plane at 6:30 in the morning Hello all!!
So we have just got back from an eventful trip to Venice!!
Our journey began last Thursday the 2nd August. The airport is far away so we had a three hour coach trip first!! Then we finally arrived at the airport at 1am, and our plane was not until 6.30am so it was a long wait sleeping on the airport floor!! It must be a similar story for everyone because the airport was crammed full of people in sleeping bags!!
We finally boarded the plane and took off on time, it was cloudy everywhere so we didn’t see anything good on the way!! When we landed in Venice it was off for another coach ride to the town centre. To get around Venice you have to use the Water Bus, which goes down the main canal, there are no cars on Venice everywhere is canals and little walkways and lots of bridges!
We stayed on a large island about a 10 minute boat ride form Venice, called Lido. On this island there are roads and cars, it’s the only place in Venice which has roads. We wanted to stay on Lido because it has a beach
The journey Begin\
At our first stop,gatwick airport to catch the bus to stansted where we had to sleep on the floor and wait for our plane at 6:30 in the morning and is generally much cheaper to eat out there and buy food etc than Venice. So we got off the water bus at Lido and walked to our Hotel, which took about 10 mins (luckily it was overcast and cool for us to carry our heavy bags!)
Our hotel was basic, quite a small room, but it was all we needed really!! After a two hour power nap we headed out to Lido for dinner where we found a nice little pizza place. When we sat down we realised they were playing rap music (Eminem etc) but it was the unedited version!! I think they thought as it was English words then the English tourists would like it…. I don’t think they realised that it was really bad swearing!!
After a lovely meal of Pizza and italian icecream we got the water bus back over to Venice mainland to have a walk around. Over there we wandered through the little streets and watched the beautiful sunset.
After a restful nights sleep we were ready for another day of action and we headed out to Venice again. Once there we went into the Palace Ducale, in St Marks Square
The journey Begin's
I fell asleep on the bus to stansted which is where the Duke of Venice used to live back in the day. No one lives there now, it has an amazing courtyard and lovely rooms inside, although we couldn’t take pictures inside….It also houses the courts used back then and leads out to a bridge called “The Bridge of Sighs” connects the palace to the prison, over a canal. Its called the Bridge of Sighs because it’s the way that prisoners would be sent to prison after being sentenced in the Palace Ducale. It is said that they used to sigh because it was their last look at Venice as the prisons were under water level.
After visiting the prison we headed back outside to St Marks Square and over to the Bell Tower. It is 325 feet high and we went up for magnificent views over Venice.
After this we headed over to the Rialto Bridge which was the first bridge built in Venice. It has market stalls on it on both sides. After crossing it we wandered through the streets looking in the shops until it was time to go home and get changed for dinner.
After we got changed it was back
to St Marks Square for a romantic Gondola ride! We headed under the bridge of sighs to start with then through the small canals of Venice. Alongside us was another gondola with a man playing accordion and singing in Italian which was very romantic. Once we were down a small canal by ourselves Leondre decided it was time to make it official! he even managed to get down on one knee without falling overboard! It was very romantic and the ring was lovely! We were both so happy for it to be official we couldt stop smiling at each other...the rest of the ride went by too quickly after that!
After our ride we went to the Rialto bridge again where we had a romantic dinner right by the Grand Canal! After a lovely dinner we made our way back to St Mark’ Square to watch the famous restaurant bands play. It’s the most expensive place in Venice to have a cup of coffee as they charge you just to sit there! So when the bands start playing in the evening there is a big crowd of people watching and no one actually sitting down in the restaurant!!
Waiting at stansted
Terri making our bed for the night.. we did'nt sleep but just tried to kill time Then it was time to head home for a well deserved rest. The next morning we decided to have a restful day on the Lido island, so we rented bicycles and cycled the island flat….the only problem was that we got a bit carried away because Leondre got a puncture!!! And we happened to be about 2 miles from the rental shop, so we had to walk all the way back in 36’C heat!!!
Once there we then went for lunch on Lido then headed over to Venice again to meander through the little streets some more! After a restful day we went for dinner and then to sleep!!
On our final day we decided to head to the beach but we forgot that we had to check out of our hotel in the morning and our flight wasn’t until half past 10 that evening! They very kindly let us leave our bags in the hotel for the day though! But we were going to have a long day with no showering after spending the day on the beach….but we made a plan!! We headed down to a fancy beach with a big hotel on it and we
Venice here we come
Finally on the plane,shortly after this pic we passed out..don't even remember taking off snuck into their posh swimming pool, then we were questioned by the lifeguard as to what our room number was and whether we were guests of the hotel!! So we were naughty and lied and said yes!! Then we felt too guilty and left after only about half an hour!!
We then decided to hire bikes again as we didn’t get to see the whole of the island because of Leondre’s flat tire!! So we missioned round the whole island and then at the end of the afternoon we headed back to the posh beach to use their beach showers....so we had a wash in our swimming suits on the beach!!! Then we got changed in the beach toilets and cycled back into town to give our bikes back! Then we headed back to our hotel to pick up our heavy bags and then it was off to the bus station again to start the long journey home!
Once we got to the airport we learned that our flight was delayed by an hour….so we had to have chocolate for dinner (which wasn’t too bad!) while we waited for our flight!!
We ended up only getting home
in the early hours of the morning and we both had to get up and go to work the next day! We had an awesome time and we cant wait to go to on our next Adventure.
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John and Lynda
non-member comment
Congrats - officially!
Hi Guys, Official congratulations now you have the ring on finger! Glad that you had a wonderful time in this beautiful city, which we walked FLAT way back in 1976. (Easy to get lost, too!) Happy Birthday Leondre! Lots love John and Lynda