Blogs from Veneto, Italy, Europe - page 12

Claire's plan was to drag me out of bed at 6am, haul me to the canal edge and make me take long exposure photos of the canal. But things didn't quite work out how she planned.... Yesterday was graduation day for wreath wearing students and they were still chanting and partying at 2am pretty much outside our room. I managed to get some sleep but Claire was awake until 2am. I had some bizarre and horrific nightmares and toothache keeping waking me up as well as Claire coughing. So when the alarm went off at 6 neither of us were feeling ready to hit the town, well the canal anyway. I had some painkillers but the coughing continued and neither of us got much more sleep before the next alarm went off at 8am. This time ... read more

My mum told me that the best way to arrive at Venice is via water, so I did that; not because I listen to my Mum (lol at the thought!) but because it turned out to be the cheapest route. Glyn bought advance return tickets for the water shuttle service with Alilaguna for €25 each and the boats were moored outside Marco Polo Airport just like a bus station. Lucky for us, our boat was just about to leave and so we stepped down inside the bowels of the packed passenger area where we all sat beneath window level and had to risk standing if we wanted to look outside. The boat was small, holding around 20 passengers all facing inwards and twisting uncomfortably to try and get a first peek of Venice. Crossing the lagoon ... read more

Early start, train to Venice at 8.25, train not as busy as I thought it would be and only €9 per ticket. Plan was to go to our accommodation, dump bags & head into Venice.......missed our stop went straight to Venice just left our bags in the luggage hold in station no problemo!!! Had a lovely omelette in a street cafe and just wondered the lovely narrow streets, we did see a queue of people waiting to go into a building after asking a lady what they were waiting for and being told it was go o to a viewing platform we sort of tagged on and joined the tour, views were lovely although mist was quite low. While sitting by the grand canal we met a lovely couple from Oxford so we sat chatting to ... read more

woke up this morning to the sound of water lapping against our bedroom wall so we opened the curtains and the shutters an admired the lake before getting out of bed, once up we went and had our complimentary breakfast overlooking the Lake of scrambled eggs and various pastries with Jam and Nuttella which is everywhere here in Italy. we packed our bags and started off for Venice, but first a quick 1 hour boat ride from Varenna which should have been 80 euro but his card machine wouldnt work so he accepted 70 which was all the cash we had. we drove the boat across the lake to Menagio and followed the shore down to Tremezzo across to Bellagio and back to Varenna there are a lot of fancy houses right on the water that ... read more

Venice I arrived at Venice’s Santa Lucia railway station just before noon. I came out of the station to be confronted with two facts. Facing a canal, I realised navigation is not quite as easy as being on one land mass. The second, the somewhat abrupt realisation that Venice was in fact created before all that politically correct and thoughtful stuff like access to places via ramps, etc…… Yes, I know, I packed my case, I should be able to manage it. But for goodness sake, does Venice really need that many steps…. Every bridge, steps… (I tell a lie, one actually had a type of ramp on it and two had a section with shorter steps that were rounded.) Then my favourite technology, google maps got confused as to where I was and sent me ... read more