July 7 Venice Italy

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July 7 Venice Italy...So pinch us! A kid from the North end of Kingston a girl from Pembroke enjoyed all that Venice has to offer today! Seems a little sureal to us. Our day started off in Lucerne Switzerland and drove towards the Italian border, We drove through the Gotthard Tunnel which is 17 km's long. Our guide says it is the longest automobile tunnel in the world. The countryside of the Italian speaking part of Switzerland is as the scenery was in the German section of Switzerland - breathtaking! We drove across the border and on to Milan Italy where we enjoyed our first Italian meal. From Milan we made our way to Venice. I never knew it, but Venice is an Island City. No cars get there, no cars there. We took a water taxi down the Grand Canal to the island. We then had a quick orientation from our tour guide about Venice and some of the history and then we had a tour of the Murano Glass works. We were treated to a couple of demonstrations of both solid glass sculpture and the old art of glass blowing. We did a little shopping and then we had a traditional Gondola ride. THIS my freinds is where todays story begins. We bordered our lovely gondola for our ride through the "back streets" (back canals?) of Venice. A very leisurely boat ride with an accordian player an a tenor in the boat next to us with some of our fellow tour travellers. We had been warned that the canals of Venice can get pretty smelly on a hot day in the summer - the temperature in Venice today was 34 C but it reallly didn't seem to smell bad. Our lovely relaxing (dare I say romantic) gondola ride proceeded very nicely through the small canal to the grand canal which is where you turn around to return to your embarcation point. Just as we got to the center of the Grand Canal to turn around, a Police boat (remember - no cars, only boats!) came screaming by and pretty much swamped our gondola! Sherry got soaked with the water of the Venice canal! Our tour guide said he had heard stories of this kind of thing, but in his 14 years of being a Tour Director to Venice he had never seen it happen first hand. Needless to say, we had a shower (very quickly!) on the return to the hotel to remove the canal "water" (and I use the word, "water" very loosely!). By the way...Back on my political soapbox for a moment - so far, I have not seen a single windmill in Italy. As first stated, being here is really sureal. Tomorrow we are off to Rome for a couple of days.
From Venice with Love, A soggy - Sherry and Hal

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Comments

[Carrie Lynn]

Would only happen to you!
Had a great laugh reading that story...as will many others I bet!