3 nights in Venice

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Our longest day of travel was when we went from Cinque Terre to Venice. The trip required 2 train changes and took about 6 hours. It was raining when we arrived in Venice and that made me a little nervous. It floods in Venice, normally in November and March, so I was hoping we wouldn't be there for any flooding. It had been raining in Venice the previous 5 days, but luckily for us, it only rained the day we arrived.

We opted to use our Hilton points for our stay in Venice, might as well save some money. We had been staying in small hotels and family-run B&Bs throughout our trip, but we enjoyed the comfort of the hotel. We had a nice, large, flat screen TV to watch the election results, we arrived in Venice on Nov 4. It was also our anniversary and the hotel had a bottle of Bellini

A Sinking City

Gondolas with Rialto in background
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and a card waiting for us in our room. After getting used to having a cappuccino and a croissant for breakfast, we had a nice buffet that included eggs, potatoes, waffles and the most delicious ham. Staying in the Hilton was a nice way to end our trip and celebrate our anniversary.

Venice has some great architecture and lots of canals and bridges everywhere. The gondolas everywhere were beautiful. We got lost in Venice a lot! There are no major streets and none of the streets go straight and once you hit a piazza, the streets go off in different directions. We had the most trouble looking for restaurants that were in our Rick Steves book. By the time we found a place, I was starving! There were signs along certain paths that pointed you in the direction of the major sites, like St. Mark's Square, the Rialto, even the train station, but it was hard to stay on the right path. All the sudden there weren't anymore signs. It was neat though seeing the backstreets of Venice, not knowing where you were. You couldn't get too lost, since you were on an island!

Canal in Murano
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The food in Venice was my least favorite. There were a lot of fish on the menus. We like fish, Mike more than me, but options for non-fish dishes were very limited. I was brave, however, and tried cuttlefish in ink while we were there. It was a popular dish in Venice, so I wanted to try it. I didn't like it much, but ate what I could. We went to a hole in the wall joint for lunch one day and I had spaghetti with clams and Mike had fish lasagna, both were pretty good. Our last night, we went to a restaurant that proudly served no fish. It was one of our favorite restaurants from our trip.