It has been 6 days since I have been back in London but I couldn't put my mind in place to write about the memories of Venice & Florence (damn feels like the holiday was ages back already!)...I can give plenty of reasons for being a slacker...too much work, suffering from fever - cough...blah blah blah...
Anyway here we go in nutshell!:
Friday (25th March): Exploring confusing streets and alleys of Venice
Our day started with getting up at 4.30 AM to catch our early morning flight to Venice Marco Polo Airport from Gatwick. As usual our taxi pick up was late (I definitely have to start booking some other taxi service!) but we still managed to get to airport in time. Hey ho, 1 hour 50 minutes flight to Venice was a short one followed by the public water taxi transfer from Venice Airport to our ferry stop called Ospedale (means hospital) on Venice island. I must confess though that during our whole duration on the ferry (which was roughly 45 minutes), I was cribbing about taking public transport especially when you see the private water taxis whizzing by so fast and those taxis looked so much fun too!! (camel cart in my dad's birth village must be faster then our public transport ferry! Ha!!😛😉)
First reaction of both of us when we got down at our stop was 'OMG'..ofcourse in a good way!! I asked for the directions for our hotel from one of the locals and the first word he said was 'senorita'..hahaha...it is absolutely impossible not to remember bollywood movie dialogues at such times (Senorita, bade bade shehron mein aisi choti choti baatein hoti rehti hai!!..hehehe). Anyway we managed to get to our hotel in Santa Maria Farmosa Square by asking for directions from few people on the way which was barely 10 minutes walk.
Note: Never visit Venice with big luggages as there are lot of bridges you might have to go up and down on the way lugging those big bags!!
After checking in the hotel, since it was already lunch time we decided first to have lunch in the restaurant next door to our hotel which turned out to be one of our favourite places as we ate atleast one of our meals everyday in that restaurant (also attaching the link for the restaurant from trip advisor!- https://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/Restaurant_Review-g187870-d6371611-Reviews-Trattoria_Agli_Artisti-Venice_Veneto.html). Oh and ofcourse one of the 2 reasons (first obviously food being awesome), my dear friend picked up a fancy on this cutie guy in the restuarant - Luca!!
Touristy Day 1 finally started by picking up a local city street map and walking up to Rialto bridge. It was so much fun to get lost on the way and exploring tiny alleys of Venice. Every alley has few connecting bridges over canals. It was totally inevitable not to stop by in the shops along our way and buy a few things. We didn't realise after reaching Rialto bridge which path we took and ended up in Piazza San Marco. That was an another bollywood moment for us as San Marco Sqaure is a shooting location of one of our favourite songs "Khuda Jaane". Ofcourse I had to do few bollywood steps, afterall you don't visit such locations everyday...!!
I'm not going to bore you with the history about Rialto bridge and San
Marco Piazza so giving wikipedia links here for the same!(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piazza_San_Marco, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rialto_Bridge)
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| Lagoon View |
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| San Marco Square |
Walking some more along the lagoon was fun, after which we decided to come back to San Marco Square to have a late coffee and some food. We got chatty with this old English couple in the restauarant who have been visiting Venice every year for last 25 years and looked still in so much love with each other (you can easily tell this by looking at the way they were holding hands and looked at each other adoringly). The lady told us they have just celebrated their 30th wedding anniversary and this time their son and daughter in law have come with them who just called in to say they are expecting their first baby!! She told us just 4-5 days back she had an heartattack and was not sure if she could make it to her 30th anniversary or visit Venice.
Beautiful thought to go to bed on day 1: how short and uncertain life could be so why not live for the day and make most of it!!
Saturady (26th March): Exploring some more Veneziano alleys and Burano-Murano-Torcello day trip:
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| My Antonio Banderas! |
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| Beautiful Gondolas |
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| Trying to Kiss one of the Bridges! |
First stop was at Murano, the island known for glass making (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murano). We visited one of the glass factories and saw how craftsmen work in the factories making all sorts of beautiful glass things.Attaching some pics we took in the factory.
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| Glass factory in Murano |
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| Aren't these glass structures awesome?! |
Second stop was at Torcello (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torcello) where we visited the Cathedral of Santa Maria Assunta and the Church of Santa Fosca.
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| Santa Maria Assunta Cathedral |
Last stop was visiting Burano, the island known for beautifuil colourful fishermen houses (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burano). We walked around the centre and along the canals admiring the beautiful houses and the bright colours used on these houses.
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| Colourful fishermen houses in Burano |
Day 2 ended with eating a big meal again at our favourite restaurant and drinking their amazing house red wine. Luca was so sweet to fetch us some awesome gelato from his friend's shop as we were too lazy to get up and going to another place for an ice cream!
Sunday (27th March): Day trip to Florence.
We did a blunder by booking our return train tickets from Venice Maestro station to Florence. We should have booked it from St Lucia station which is the central station in Venice. That means we had to first walk to Rialto bridge for taking ferry to St Lucia station, then take a train to Maestro and then get on to our Florence train which is 1 hour 50 min journey from Maestro. We only got to know about this mistake the same morning while we were asking the directions from our reception person before heading out ..arghhh!
Since our train for Florence was for 8.30 AM and we were already late to buy separate train ticket at St Lucia station, we just got onto the first train we thought is going to Maestro. I was ready to take a chance that ticket checker might not come (since it's too early morning and we might save some money..teehee!) or if he comes then taking that innocent desi shot of girl traveler by saying oh we didn't know we needed a separate ticket for this train...cheeky me!
Anyway obviously ticket checker came and I played the shot of I didn't know, thank god he didn't fine us and made us only pay for the train fare!
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| Dumo View from Piazza Michaelangelo |
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| Dumo in Florence |
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| Michaelangelo statue in the piazza michaelangelo |
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| Dumo View from Fiesole |
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| Spritz Veneziano |
Since it was our last day in Venice, after walking for few hours in some more alleys and exploring more hidden cathedrals (our english couple told us that even after visiting Venice for last 25 years, they always come across new places and streets in Venice which I can totally understand now why!) , we decided to check out St. Mark's Basilica in San Marco Square. But gosh, the queue was like never ending, we waited for an hour but after that we gave up. Note to ouselves - book tickets for such places in advance..huh!
Anyway, it was almost time to leave for the airport in the evening. We bid goodbye to beautiful Venice and headed back to the airport through water taxi. Journey back to London was painful with flight delays and long immigration queues at London airport with 2 hours of waiting time...ouch.
Another great holiday memories saved in my head! Adieu Venice until we meet again!
