Day 26: Venice

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Today we got up at about 8:30am and headed for breakfast before 9:30 (when it finished serving). We then headed into Venice.

The train station being just a few minutes away by foot was great, and we had no trouble catching the trains which leave every 10 minutes. We all felt glad that we didn’t need to spend any time in the car today listening to repeats of Queen, Queen and more Queen (Billy’s best).

We had dinner overlooking the Grand Canal which was beautiful and was very romantic with the three of us

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Venice was absolutely gorgeous, with canals, millions of boats (water taxi’s, gondolas and water ferry service) and no cars/buses etc. There were a lot of people there and it is very commercial. As you walk down the streets that you can walk down they are lined with brand name shops and souvenier shops.

We went to the Ca Dora Museum where some famous artworks are housed including Saint-Sébastien by Andrea Mantegna. This was quite nice, not exhilarating and was pretty small. It was nice to be out of the heat for a little while which meant we spent quite some time there taking in every piece of art. The weather was at least 40 degrees again, so everyone was sweltering (and as we are currently reusing clothing we are going through a lot of deodorant – but must smell better than some people we noticed).

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We had lunch at Maccas again, at this point in our trip getting Billy to eat at all is a bit of a battle, even at Maccas he tends to nibble on his chips and then complain when having to eat his nuggets, with the amount of walking he’s doing we really need to get him to eat more, but god knows how!!!

After this we walked to the water ferry and bought a day pass (12 euro and no discount for 5 year olds). The ferry was great as it enabled us to see all the beautiful buildings along the Grand Canal. It is definitely the most functional way of getting around and is very efficient (although can be crowded). There were lots of hotels in Venice and people walking around with suitcases, accessing them involved a bit of walking and in summer I would suggest booking and then arriving in the evening to avoid lugging suitcases through the Venetian streets during the day.

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We wanted to go to see what was referred to in the laptop as the Palace of the Doges, but we couldn’t find this in the ‘easy guide to Venice’ we had purchased at the station (2.5 Euro with a description of important buildings and a map). We had a look and decided to head to an area that looked like it had a park via the Water Ferry. We arrived to what was an amazing Cathedral with lots of spires and a huge line to get in. The size and detail in the Saint Mark’s Basilica was amazing we decided however the line was too long and we would not pay it a visit (reading later we perhaps should have).

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We stopped to feed the pidgeons (1 euro a bag of bird seed apparently with birth control), that was actually good fun as they would eat out of your hand or on your head etc. etc. Billy loved it and we all enjoyed it – surprisingly none of them decided to poop on us which was nice.

We then went to the Ducale Palace which we found out was in fact the Palace of the Doges (given the size of Venice it was quite amazing that we had stumbled upon it). This was awesome, the ornate rooms of the senate were lined with gold paint and hundreds of huge paintings in numerous rooms that would have simply taken forever to paint, and would not have been out of place in the Louvre (though they would have had to build another wing). We spent about two hours in the palace, going from the Doges apartments, the senate, courtrooms and prisons. There were a lot of guards watching us and telling off anyone who dared to snap a photo (even without a flash). The windows were usually open and at one stage there was two holes in the windowsill which Billy wanted to know what they were used for. After telling him it was to sit naughty boys out of the room until they behave (one leg in each hole), he didn’t really buy that, so we decided it was to throw things out the window. Kim decided it would be a good idea to demonstrate so poured half a bottle of water out the window, narrowly missing a swerving Gondala below.

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John (Kim’s dad) would have liked the prisons which were completely windowless with a door about half my height to get in and out and a whole to pass food/drink through.

After this, we headed back by water taxi to another stop and wandered back through the streets to the station. We had dinner overlooking the Grand Canal which was beautiful and was very romantic with the three of us.

Tool of the Day

The guards who were trying to stop people take photos, they were failing miserably, as people would take a photo blatantly (e.g. go to the other end of the room, line it up, take the photo as three of the Gestapo head for her) then say sorry and walk away with a big grin to the next room.