We are now in Venice, Italy. We took the train from Florence this morning. The train was crowded but we had reserved seats. Never did get our tickets checked. They kinda look at them when you get on the station track but they didn’t check them after that.
We were met after we got off the train and the person that met us walked us to a pre-reserved water taxi. We were delivered to the front door of the hotel. Our room wasn’t ready yet so we found a restaurant close by and had lunch. I had baked fish, a salad and grilled vegetables. The fish was the whole fish. It had a delicious tomato sauce over it. I ate as much as I could figure out how to eat without getting into the bones.
Our hotel is the best one we have had on this trip. Nice service and nice rooms. After we got checked in we rested in our room for about 30 minutes and then decided to walk the 1.2 miles to go to our 5:00 gondola ride. The map helped but we got lost several times. The roads seem to change names without warning and the directional signs are a bit challenging to figure out. We would run into dead ends. You have to figure out which bridge to cross and which road had a bridge to cross. The good news is there are no cars on the roads. Some of the roads were full of people but still not as crowded as Rome was.
We got to the starting point of the gondola ride with lots of time to spare. We walked around the square and enjoyed the beauty of it all. At 5:00 we went to the starting point and had to wait about 15 minutes for our turn. We had an accordion player and a guy that sang to us during our ride. We got our picture taken lots during the trip by the people standing on the bridges we went under. It was incredibly cheesy but hard to come to Venice and not do a gondola ride.
Our original plan was to take a water taxi back to the hotel after the gondola ride but it was so nice out we decided to walk back. We stopped for dinner on the way back. The food was good but the service was poor. I had a chicken Caesar salad and grilled veggies.
Finally made it back to our hotel. It started to sprinkle just as we were finishing dinner but it never did rain. I walked 13,000 steps today and over 5 miles.
Venice is a beautiful city. Hard to navigate but I bet we figure it out better tomorrow. We are going on a free tour of the glass blowing factory at 10:00 in the morning. We will have to pay the water taxi fee to get back. The glass products are absolutely beautiful. It will be hard to resist getting some but am not sure how I would get them home safely.
Not sure what we are going to do in the afternoon tomorrow other than probably go back to the city center square and maybe go to a museum or two. We have to be downstairs Sunday morning by 3:30 am to get to the airport in time for our 6:30 am flight to Frankfurt and then Paris. Trusting the air traffic control strike will not interfere with our travel plans Sunday.
We need to decide what we want to do with our one whole day in Paris. Don’t want to book anything for Sunday afternoon in case the flight is delayed. Tuesday we have a Loire Valley Castle tour all day. We learned in Rome we need to pre-book Skip the Line tickets if we want to do more than one thing that day. I think Nicole decided she wants to go to the Catacombs and the Louvre on Monday. If we get in with time to spare on Sunday we will do something that afternoon too. I hope we have time to take the boat ride around Paris either Sunday or Monday evening so Nicole can see the Eiffel Tower at night.
Italy has been different than I expected it to be. I sure enjoyed the countryside part of Italy more than the bigger cities. Haven’t found much eye candy as far as cute Italian men yet. It is amazing how different the energy is in the three different cities we have stayed at. I haven’t decided if I like Venice or Florence best yet.
Grateful for another safe travel day, grateful for the cheesy gondola ride, and grateful for a very nice hotel to stay in.