Day4- Rome to Venice

We boarded the train safely and on time. The train ride was good. Abhi slept well, I was on and off. Then I started talking to an Italian and he seemed ready to answer all the queries my curious mind had about the daily life in Italy. The scenery we were passing by was also beautiful with tunnels occurring quite often.

In three and a half hours, we were in Venice. Out of the train station and our faces were lit up with the sight in front. It was as beautiful as I had imagined and had seen in pictures. We couldn’t wait to explore and boarded the waterbus that took us to St. Mark’s plaza where our hostel was located. In 45min we reached our destination by moving along the grand canal. In our two minutes walk to the hostel, we crossed the St. Mark’s Square, the Doge’s Palace, the clock tower and narrow lanes with all designer labels. We dumped our luggage, got ready and moved out. We headed straight to the St. Mark’s Cathedral amidst a crowd of mostly tourists. Went to the top, visited the museum. The Cathedral was very old but yet rich and huge. We went around the Doge’s Palace and passed the beautifully adorned palace rooms, office rooms and weathered prison cells all in the same structure. By that time we were hungry,so found a nice Italian restaurant and stuffed ourselves. Roamed around in the countless narrow lanes looking at the glass works and headed back to our hostel. Abhi finished his office work while I read my novel.

Day 5- More of Venice and move to Florence

Next day we got ready by 7a.m, checked out and walked towards the Rialto Bridge. To our astonishment, we came to know from the hotel manager that a high tide had come at midnight that had flooded all the buildings in the area and that it was normal in that season. When we stepped out, we found all the shopkeepers removing water from their shops and wiping, it was common for them, hence none of them were obese. We finally reached the Ponte de Rialto by crossing 2 other Ponte(bridges).There is no chance of not reaching your destination through the many lanes. It started to drizzle by then. We took some snaps, roamed around headed to have a brunch. After having brunch around 9:00am,we kept wandering for some more time and at sharp 10:00am,entered the national archaeological museum. We came out of the museum around 11:30am and headed for the famous Gondola ride.

The Gondola man took us to the Rialto bridge but through canals, and through some other canal route brought us back. During the Gondola ride, I saw that they Trash collecting boats, water-supply boats, everything in the form of boats. I realized this was the way of life for them. I was ken on buying some glasswork from the famous Murano islands, but on the touristy lanes, they were overpriced. So we went back to ask our hotel manager for a reasonably priced shop for the same. Luckily, we found one and shopped a bit.

We came back, picked our backpacks and headed for the Santa Lucia Station from St. Mark’s Square waterbus station. We soon boarded the train for Firenze(Florence). Reached Florence by 7:30 p.m. We walked to the youth hostel, dumped our luggage, headed to have dinner. After finishing quickly, we went to Piazza del Duomo. It was bustling with people and street vendors. At the first sight, it looked like a painting-surely a masterpiece of the Renaissance artists. We went around the building, it was Christmas Eve and fortunately we were able to enter a church where a mass was going on. We sat there for sometime and came out. Roamed around, had tiramisu and went back to the hostel. Here also we got a detailed map from the hostel managers who were very friendly and helpful. We picked up a tourist map from the hop -on-hop-off bus stop and we knew the routes. Tried watching 3 idiots online but network connectivity was not good.

Florence Next….:-)