Rome to Venice

19th December 2006 (ROme->Venice)

Rome to Venice

what is it with these early starts... it's meant to be a holiday!

happy today we're leaving Rome... and the gypsies behind...this hotel has had the best breakfast selection of all so far... you name it it's on the buffett..choices of cereals (chocolate muslie... must be good for you right!), eggs, bacon, cake, cookies, rolls definitely something there for everyone...

though note: do not wrap cake up and take it with you for morning tea... unless you have a container or something hard to put it in,otherwise you end up like bec, with a bag now coloured the same colour as the cake once was and no cake! :O)

i think everyone here stole supplies the little packets of idividually wrapped bickies, etc and toook them to snack on later in the day! they must know people do it...they had people on the look out this morning.

boarded the dreaded bus at 8:30, and we were off... the drive between rome and venice takes 3 hours however due to the fact that you have to pay hundreds of dollars to enter the city during daylight hours (as with any major city in italy) we get to spend the next 10 hours driving to random special places choosen by our fearless driver and guide...

First stop is for the boys out in Marenello (for all you car fans!) home of the ferrari, and the factory. the boys were all rather excited nothing like getting to have your picture taken with 50 different styles! cost 20 euro just to go into the museum, so most of us just sat around inthe coffee shop, enjoying the italian way of making hot chocolates... it was so thick and sweet, it was like driking a mug of melted chocolate...

we then realised that no one was actually monitoring who went in and out of the museum, so we snuck in the lower level and had a quick look around...the cars were kind of interesting to look at... but not worth paying heaps of money to go see... you weren't aloud to touch anything!

but the boys all seemed to enjoy themselves...spent a good 2 hours there...

from there we headed 2 hours to the town of verona... the setting of good old romeo and juliet... by this time it was dark (got to love how short the days are here) and rushed through all the late night shoppers down to see juliets balcony. (fake balcony i should say)you could pay 5 euro to go up and stand there and utter the famous words

romeo, romeowhere for art though romeo

and surprisingly no one from our tour did...and rub the statue of juliets right breast!

lost hayley as she tried to barter and by a fake bag, from one of the illegal tablecloth men! lol with the fear of god that she was going to lose everyone and be caught and end up in jail! but she didn't and she got her new bag!

spent a grand total of 30mins in verona! (love it 2hrs in a factory, and 3omins in an actual city!)took another 90mins to get to venice, arrived at the hotel at 8pm... basic but nice... lol our room itself was huge there was like this whole other room with nothing in it, and there were some funny rules... one was do not use desktop to open beer bottles... (even funnier, someone must have done it in order for there to be a rule forbidding it) and do ot hang washing from the sprinklers in the roof...., and so not lay wet items on the bed, they get wet!

greeted by the owner of the hotel, a nice italian bloke by the name of mario, who looked like pavaroti! dinner was included in the hotel, and to our excitement involved pasta, with a tomato based sauce, followed by a flattened and i mean flattened to within an inch of it's life! chicken breast (it was 2mm thick!!) with good old potato's... and surprise surprise, they came out armed with a basket of apples for dessert!

at least this time round these were eadible! no one complained this time, as they say when in italy do as the italians do, and if they classify an apple as dessert then so be it...

once it was discovered how cheap the drinks were at the bar... 2 euro for 1L of beer, or 3 euro a bottle of wine, and that the bar would stay open as long as people kept buying drinks... all ideas of leaving to find a good bar were shafted and we settled in for the night... (the walk to the pub was going to be 45mins!!!! lol theboys decided they could spend that time drinking and warm rather than walking... and this way they wouldn't have to struggle to find there way back when they got forgotten!

it worked...they even managed to drink the bar out of almost everything, and somewere getting more than a little rowdy... so they decided to close the bar around 1am showers were well and truely cold... not drop of warm water to be seen... :O( and no water pressure what so ever...

20th December 2006 (free day in venice)

got a bit of a sleep in today, didn't have to be on the bus till 9:30.didn't get a choice for breakie, you just picked a spot, and your breakie was laid out in front of you, a bowl of cornflakes (well more like an 1/8 of a bowl, but cosidering we had 200mls of milk for a table of 6, and more cornflakes and you would have run out of milk..) someone in their wisdom decided they wanted more, and stole 5 bowls.. and was still not happy... needless to say were the 5 people who then didn't get any cornflakes! a crunchy roll, that was crunchy all the way though, and i'm sure you could have jumped up and down on it and it would still be in the same shape.... the cornflakes didn't soak up any of the milk, and still after 20mins you couldn't eat them!. so not many people were all that impressed... we could have done with an apple!

caught the shuttle today as it was derricks day off, and got to love italian people, if you're not on time they just leave without you... as about 10 people found out, after missing the shuttle... it don't wait! i never realised that venice was an actual island... i knew it had the canals, but never realise it was completely surrounded by waterand by the sounds of it sinking...

caught a private shuttle boat around the main canal to san marco square where we were dropped off,walked past the bridge of sighs... aptly named as it was the bridge people were lead across on their way totheir exocution and generally their last sighs were heard as they new what was awaiting them on the other side.

we were then led to the square, where on realising that no one was on hand to check bags, and there was no line to enter the church, we all ran right in!there were once again signs saying no camera and no photo's however dave dold us we could in fact take photo's...so we happliy snapped away!

the church itself was rather amazing, high ceilings painted in gold, and so colourful, stain glass windows all over the place.the time and effort that would have gone into making these places is just astounding, and they're all so old... and the detailing gone into making the front of the church was amazing... and here is where the famous horses are. that are seen all over europe.

after that we were led to the venetian glass blowing demonstrating... they say it takes 25 years to become a master at it,it took the demonstrator 3 mins to make a vase, and a horse... we later say similar pieces for sale in the store for 100 euros +...for 3 mins work!

nothing like having 50 people cramed into a small space surrounded by expensive glass!!!!

we quickly had a look around before heading out before we broke anything and had to pay for it!they had some good things in there, i loved the little fish takes, which was just like solid piece of glass, with all different fish inside... it was just cute.. but for 400 euro... no thanks!

first stop was at the clock tower... we were warned not to go up on the hour, as the chimes were really loud, waited at the bottom till they went off then headed up

It was absolutely freezing up there.. considering it was a lovely sunny day it must have been -ve something up the top of the tower. not helped by the fact it was all open...lovely view over the entire city, could see all the water surrounding the island, and the small islands off the coast.

very pretty didn't stay up there too long as we were all begining to lose feeling in our fingers.

From there we went and walked along checking out the market stalls, and admiring the fact that every little sall had exactly the same things, though the prices differed consideralbly

decided to go shoping, and just wandered in and out of shops, winding our way through the city... poor kev, got dragged in and out of some many shops, but he didn't complain at all!

found this lovely little restraunt where we decided to sample some italian pizzas, so we ordered a few different types and tried them all!

they don't seam to like to cut their pizzas up over here, and had heaps of trouble slicing them up... one almost landed on the floor...good save by bec!

headed back to meet dave at the square at 2 for our gondola rides... love the fact that all the signs point to major attractions. so you cant get lost!

where we were lead to where they would leave from...boarded our boats... and set off.. they had about 6 people in each gondola... the cool cats got stuck with librarian david which was pretty funny... i'm surprised he didn't end up over board!:O)

we managed to collect some random floating christmas decorations that floated by our boat...seems to be the common theme on seeing how many decorations we can borrow from places... we have a massive bow hanging from the ceiling of the bus, borrowed from the top of a christmas tree in nice... that the gypsies tried to steal! along with random baubles that people have borrowed of hotel christmas trees as we've moved around...

started out in the main canal, amongst the ferries... so we almost got run over a few times, before heading into the smalled inner island canals... our gondola man was rather unfriendly... he wouldn't sing for us, so we sang songs ourselves, and he pretty much just laughed at us!

the whole trip was about 45mins, and we ended up at the same place we started...our guy was a bit cranky when abby got out and steped on his cusion leaving this great big dirty mark on it... he started shouting in italian at her...kind of funny we had a lot of trouble coaxing anita out of the boat... she was so sure she was going to fall overboard... it took like 10mins to get here out, and you could the guy getting ready to let lose again! but she made it safe and sound, and as tempted as we were to push her in, we didn't!

from there we got diections from dave on where to catch the ferry up to the other end of venice and the rialto bridge, and set off, after getting lost, we decided to stop to get hot drinks,as we were a bit cold. found a map and set off, and eventually found the place we were looking for.. so not where dave said it would be.

i swear he just wanted us to get lost! caught the boat to the rialto bridge and decided to get off and check out the markets as they closed at 6pm. lots of little stores selling all types of venetian glass, and souveniers... they had so many lovely things, you could have bought heaps...bought a scarf as it was cold and got the scarf really cheap.... (definitely love to barter!)

headed back to one of the original stores we went into, as it had some lovely jewlery that couldn't be matched. met up with gayna who decided she wanted this bag... saw her bargin it was rather cunning,she walks up to this tablecloth guy and hands him ten euro's and goes, i want this bag, and picks up a bag... he's kind of shocked and goes no 20.... she goes no more money, he then looks at us and says give her more money, and we were like no...and in the end he hands her the bag, for 10!HAHAHAH it was classic

then the challenge was set to see if someone else could get one for cheaper... but no one could! headed back to meet at the flagpoles for dinner, and dave lead us to a nice little restraunt just off the square, where we all drank copious amounts of white wine before starting on the red that was all left over...our table ended up with about 9 bottles of wine on it at the end... and since it was cold outside, a mere 3 degrees, we decided to stay in the restraunt drinking out wine till the boat was to leave!

everything in venice shuts at 10pm, and most people have left by then, so as we were waiting for everyone to join us, we were constantly attacked buythese guys trying to sell off the last of their roses... cause we were all huddled together we made an easy target...

john being the gentleman he is, bought every female a rose... and even that didn't stop them from continually coming up to people..silly people.

caught the boat back to meet the shuttle, which dropped us back of at the hotel.

somehow managed to get in first and score a luke warm shower! YAY!