Last Day of Vacation!

May 29, 2009

We awoke knowing it was our last day of vacation but determined to make the best of it. We walked over to the Piazza San Marco which is the historic center of Venice and within seconds realized it wasn't where we wanted to be. Boatloads of tourists were disembarking and lining the streets awaiting entrance to the Cathedrals and museums. Knowing how difficult it would be to take in any more of Venice while standing in line we opted to skip the tourist attractions to walk the streets instead. Fast forward three hours and we'd found ourselves a lovely park, meandered through the winding streets and over nearly a hundred footbridges. Leaving that afternoon we really felt that even in such a short visit we'd feasted on much of what the city had to offer, its people and its spirit and charm. We spent the rest of the day fighting immense traffic on our nearly 7 hour (should have been 4) drive back to Rome. Exhausted at nearly 11PM, we checked into the airport Marriott for what felt like a quick cat nap before our 4AM departure for home.

The amazing jasmine blooming all over Venice

A Venetian streetscape - this is one of my favorite pics from the whole trip. The hanging laundry just screamed, "real people live here!" to me and I loved that!

The fountain in one of the parks we stumbled into during our walk around the city

The Grand Canal

A blooming waterlily

A floating paradise

May 28, 2009

We woke early, grabbed a quick pastry breakfast in Florence, said goodbye to the lovely city and headed north through tunnels and over elevated highways toward Venice, stopping in Bologna for lunch at my friend Amy's suggestion. We dined in an old wine cellar enjoying delicious local fare. We arrived in Venice in the late afternoon and parked our car in one of the many structures that line the outside of the city. And then we crossed the bridge into wonderment!

Venice is a dream world. Really, I've never seen anything like it, and regardless of how I'd imagined it in the past, I'd imagined it wrong. This city is the most incredible combination of tourist attraction and real life. After getting lost, finding our way, and getting lost again we made our way to Hotel Alex to meet our host. We actually stayed at a small B&B only peripherally related to the hotel, the B&B is just too hard to find in the winding streets and canals without assistance.

After settling in we ventured out for a twilight gondola ride and a dinner of fresh fish and homemade gnocchi. The gondola ride lasted about 45 minutes and gave us a great tour of many of the internal canals as well as the grand canal. I was in love with this city! After our ride and our dinner (at a cute restaurant recommended by our host) we just walked around the city, soaking in all the Venice we could in the one night we had.

A friend we made during our stop in Bologna

The fountain in Bologna's Centro


On our way beneath one of the more than a hundred footbridges scattered all over Venice

More incredible scenery

Our gondola buddy. I normally hate birds, especially seagulls,
but he was very docile and just chattered to us