Advertisement
Published: February 13th 2013
Edit Blog Post
How twee can we be?
Very! I expected to hate Venice (crowds, commercialism etc). it has all the negatives but I loved it! K - our final overnight ferry of the trip brought us from Split to Venice which fully lived up to its hype. Yes it was crowded and packed with tourists but despite this I found that St Marks Square and the Grand Canal fully lived up to their billing. We didnt go into the Doge's Palace, we were just too cultured out, but instead spent hours walking around the small streets finding little bars selling cicchetti (Italian style tapas) and spritz (a campari and prosecco cocktail). This is the type of culture we really enjoy.
On Day 2 we took the vaporetti over to the Lido which has a very different vibe to Venice. We didn't sit on the beach there but took a look and it was completely empty. Given the number of sunloungers I doubt this is always the case but had we been in Venice longer than our 2 nights we would have definitely spent some time there.
Our final destination was the island of Burano with its brightly painted houses. Very beautiful and quite quiet by Venice standards. And after a very pleasant couple of hours there we headed off back to Venice and to
a Vivaldi concert in an old church. Just to prove that we do occasionally do more than eat and drink.
Venice was definitely a shock in both terms of numbers of tourists (we havent heard so many American accents since we left there last May!) and also our wallet. The number of tourist restaurants was also depressing - high prices and low quality abounded. It was tricky to find authentic places to eat with the quality Italy is famed for but we managed quite well and despite this I loved it and will definitely be back.
Our trip to Italy was due to be very short as we were really only here to meet up with friends at their home near Lucca in Tuscany. Not that we have anything against Italy but we plan to visit properly in the future and time on our RTW trip was definitely running low by now. So our next whistlestop was Florence. For one night only!
Clearly one night is not sufficient time to explore such a cultural icon as Florence so we again spent our time absorbing the atmosphere. And eating! We did however climb the 463 steps to the
top of the Duomo to see the view. We did not go to the famous Uffzi except to see the replica of David outside. I know nothing about Renaissance art and have decided to do some homework before making a proper visit to this area.
And so on to Pisa and the famous tower. Shorter than we had envisaged but certainly leaning. Mark and I think that the Leaning Tower of Pisa was perhaps the first "cultural" building we became aware of as kids and it was nice to see it 40 years later!
We recovered from this ridiculously whirlwind tour at our friends beautiful villa in the hills near Lucca, in itself a very pretty Tuscan town. Phil actually became the Count of Monte when he purchased his home - not that he mentioned it......much! It hasn't changed him - he was fine as long as we called him Sir and remembered to bow in the mornings. He and his wife, Christine were super hosts and we really got a feel for the Tuscan life. It was however quite funny when they commented that it was now tourist season and Lucca was therefore not as enjoyable as
normal- all I can say is that they clearly havent been to Venice or Florence in June recently!
Good food, good wine and good company made the following 4 nights fly by and before we knew it we were heading off to Barcelona!
Scroll down for more photos
Advertisement
Tot: 0.31s; Tpl: 0.013s; cc: 16; qc: 63; dbt: 0.0931s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb