28th April – Venice.

  


lots of odd shaped buildings



No, it's not a painting, it is the Grand Canal in Venice



One of the 400 bridges in Venice

A typical street

We had a knock at the door, and the train attendant was there with croissants and juice for our breakfast and told 40 mins till Milan.  We had time to wash, dress, eat breakfast and get sorted before the train arrived. We had an hour stopover between trains and then a 2 hour ride to Venice.  First impressions of Venice.  There is a lot of water and it is very muddy looking.  There are boats all over the place.  There are poles sticking out of the water and these we discovered were like road markings because there are so many boats.  The train station is right beside the Grand Canal and so ff we went with faithful Navman to walk the 1.1km to our hotel.  What a labrynth of narrow alleyways and bridges.  Also, lots of people.  If we didn’t have Navman we would never have found the hotel on our own.  The only  

The streets of Venice

markings were a piece of paper sellotaped to the window that said hotel.   We went into the narrow door and were told we could not have our room till after 1pm but were welcome to leave our bags there.  We wandered off and found a café to have a cup of tea.  From there we decided to try and find San Marco Piazzale as this was the main area of Venice.  Eventually after going through many alleyways and finding lots of bridges to climb up the steps and then down the steps, we found San Marco’s.  

View from the Rialto Bridge. The main bridge in Venice.

 A huge square and the lowest point on the island so very prone to flooding, the doorway of the church was under water.  On the square sits two churches, The Doges (Duke) Palace, Houses of Parliament (now a museum) and an impressive clock tower.  

San Marco Cathedral

Just around the corner from the Palace is the famous Bridge of Sighs 

One of the small waterways through the city

 (Ponte dei Sospri).  I had been looking forward to seeing this bridge but to my disappointment it was partially covered with scaffolding scrim.  We took all the photos that we could and then made our way back to the hotel where I was able to have a long awaited hot shower and a wee nana nap.  When we woke, we wandered back around the streets to watch the people, look in the amazing array of shops and find somewhere nice for dinner.  Day is complete.

Rod on the bridge to our hotel