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Day 1 - To Venice Another traveling day and another early start! A few train changes later and we arrived in Venice!! We checked in to our hotel which was one that Chris had stayed at previously. He had mentioned that when we booked and it looked like it payed off as we got quite a nice room, which looked straight out onto a canal! Having seen a few of the other rooms, we got a pretty big room too! So... We dropped off our stuff and went walking. We hit St Marks square and once again I was impressed at the enormous, exquisite cathedral! Very fancy! I was quite overwhelmed by the incredible lay out of Venice. It is something completely different to what I had expected. I loved the old buildings, the little canals in between streets, the grand canal and the huge number of boats, taxis and gondolas who all manage to dodge each other even though it was very busy!! We decided to work our way through the lonely planets guide to the best gelati in Venice and found the first place called Suso. Close to the best gelati we had had yet! Then after dinner
we found the second place called Grom! Now THAT was the best gelati I had had!! After a busy day of traveling we had an early night and watched Casino Royale to see if we could recognize and then find the building they blew up at the end of the film! (Well, Chris wants me to tell you that
he watched Casino Royale and I watched the inside of my eyelids!)
Day 2 Today the weather was pretty crappy so we jumped on the Vaparetto (water bus) and cruised around the grand canal while we waited for midday when we had booked a tour of the Doge's Palace. The grand canal is so impressive and all the buildings along the sides were very cool!! It was quite rough on the water that morning so the boat ride was pretty bumpy!! We got to the Doge's palace and got on a tour of the secret places of the palace. Our tour guide was the slowest speaker in all of Italy and very strict on not touching anything, leaning on the walls and making sure your bag was carried on your front!! Chris was "reminded" a million times to put
his bag on the front and he even got in trouble for just touching the hand rail on the stairs - who knows what would have happened if he needed to use it!! We were taken through some offices of the judges and then to the prisons, the torture chamber and we saw the prison cells where Casanova was locked up and eventually escaped from. The palace was incredibly extravagant with gold leaf everywhere, hundreds of pieces or art, sculptures and marble floor!! I am amazed at how people loved painting ceilings; something no one really does these days! Maybe people realized how much it hurts your neck to look at for any length of time!!
We then walked ages to find the last place on the gelati guide and what a waste of a walk! The gelati was crap!! So we threw it in the grand canal and back to Suso!
We couldn't go to Venice and not go on a Gondola ride! Expensive yes, but worth it! Our gondolier was hilarious! He pointed out some good points of interest (eg spots where movies were filmed) and he had a very good set of lungs on him! Every
corner he came up to he did what resembled a tarzan cry to warn people he was coming round the corner! When he wasn't yelling he was singing! It was brilliant! Some songs were Italian, some were in English! He sang what sounded like "imagine all the people" but they were definitely not the right lyrics!! Too funny!! A very worthwhile experience!! We finished off the evening with dinner and then MORE gelati back at Grom!!
And that was our last night in Italy! I loved Italy so much! The pizza, pasta, gelati were all brilliant and the sights were incredible! So much history! Just so different to anything we have in Australia! Very worthwhile experience!! Next stop... Switzerland!!
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