Italia Grandiosa - Venice

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I woke up at 5.45. For breakfast I had 2 slices of bread, a cappuccino and some yogurt. There wasn’t a lot of choice. We left for Venice at 7.30 and it took almost 2 hours to get to the point where the boat was leaving. We had some misfortune, because when you go to Venice by touring bus, it has to get a ticket before it can go to the harbor. When we got to the ticket office, there was a line of 50 busses! Our driver decided to take his chance and leave to the harbor without the ticket. We were stopped and our driver was fined € 70,-. At least we got in time at the harbor, and later we compensated our driver Donato.
At the harbor we got to our ( private ) boat and we went to Burano. Venice consists out of 117 small islands. Some are large, some small. Burano was around 1 hour to get there by boat. Burano has very colorful houses and a very relaxed atmosphere. It is famous for its lace industry. We had an hour off and I wandered around the town. I bought 3 covering shawls for my mum. They were of silk and very nice. Bought a gelato and we went with the boat to Venice. It was over an hour and the traffic was getting busier the closer we got to Venice.
Venice is around 1400 years old. It started by people from the coast fled for the barbarian. It grew slowly. The Venetians lived from fishing and from the salt trade. Salt was very expensive, and also used as pay. Sale is the Italian word for salt. Because of the salt trade to the East the Venetians started trading in spices too. They became a very important and rich kingdom. The wealth is still visible today.
When we arrived in Venice we had a walk through town. After 1 hour we were taken by a gondola through the canals. We were shown around for 30 minutes. It could have been a romantic tour, but there were some people making jokes about letting the gondolier drop into the canal. ..
We had lunch at a Chinese restaurant. Of course we had pizza. Surprisingly, it was a very bad one. It was a pizza Margarita, with a little cheese only. The wine was nice though.
After lunch we went to the Piazza San Marco. It was extremely busy here. The square is impressive, but because of all the tourists here, I lost interest very quickly. I wanted to have a look on top of the tower of the basilica San Marco. I was waiting 45 minutes in line all ready when I realized I wouldn’t have enough time in the 2 hours we had. I had a closer look around at the Doge Palace. The square is nice, but they should do something against the flying rats and tourists.
We had another tour by water taxi. We went on the Canal Grande, and saw the old buildings here. We also went underneath the Rialto Bridge. I was afraid it could collapse on top of us; there were at least a million tourists on it, my guess.
We were dropped off at the harbor where we took another boat back to the mainland. We arrived back at 18.00. I had time for another gelato ( ice cream ). We arrived back at the hotel at 19.45. For dinner we had, risotto, tomato soup, a kebab, carrots and as dessert some pastry. Together with the red wine it was a very good diner. I went to sleep at 22.30.

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