We woke up on the Nightjet train in our sleeper compartment, and had breakfast served in our compartment – Viennese rolls with a selection of condiments and some charcuterie items, as well as coffee and juice.
We arrived at Venice Santa Lucia train station and purchased a 24-hour water bus (vaporetto) pass. This took us right to the door of our hotel after three or four stops.
It was only 9am, but the hotel had a room available for us! We had really only stopped by to drop our bags off. We took our bags up to room 502. The elevator went to the fourth floor, and the. We had an additional flight of stairs to get to this room at the top of the hotel.
The room was quite large and palatial. Good value for $88AUD!
We then headed out to explore the city. We crossed the Rialto bridge – the oldest of four bridges that cross the Grand Canal. I found the travel agency where we needed to meet at about 2pm for our gondala tour. We continued on around the city, making our way to St Marks Piazza. We spent some time waking around the shops around the square and along the waterfront. We entered St Mark’s Basilica. Wow, a truly beautiful interior.
By this stage, Ulick was hanging out for a proper Italian coffee, so we headed to a cafe for an early lunch of pizza, pasta and coffee.
After lunch, we continued our exploring of the city. I hadn’t anticipated just how confusing Venice is to navigate! Lots of little walkways, some go places, some are dead ends.
We started finding our way back to the travel agency, and found it eventually. We continued our exploring, just a block at a time from the agency. We found a United Colours of Benetton shop, so had a good look in there, purchasing a little something for baby Harry’s Christmas present. We went to a antiquarian bookshop that also sold bookmarks and other items made from recycled leather – so I purchased one of those as a souvenir of Venice. Our bags are pretty full, so I am cautious of not buying too much, as much as I would like too!
We went for another coffee break before heading to our gondala tour. I had booked a shared tour, but we ended up having the gondala just to the two of us, so that was nice. The gondalas have names on them, and the names on ours were Sara and Roberto, which seemed fitting given Ulick’s second name is Robert!
The gondala tour was great, and I could have spent all day seeing Venice from the water this way.
When we left our tour, I remembered I hadn’t seen the Bridge of Sighs – so we walked the 300m or so to go see that.
After that we hopped onto a Vaporetto the long way towards our hotel. It is a great way to see the city.
We got back to our room, and discovered both the heating and the television weren’t working. I was too tired to care, but Ulick insisted on getting it sorted out. He came back with a second set of keys, for a room of the fourth floor. So we relocated. The second room was smaller, but you could feel right away that the heating was working. It even had floor heating in the bathroom, and a bath tub!
My feet and knees were look forward to a shower, but once I saw that bathtub, I knew how I wanted to spend some time!
We headed out for a quick bite at the local McDonalds – only about 30m away from the hotel, before heading back to the hotel so I could have a bath.
I ran the bath and filled it with the complimentary bath foam and watched an episode of The Crown. Then came the time for getting out of the bath! It was a longer bath than the one I normally use at mum’s house, and it was very slippery from foam. It took a bit of work and engineering application to get out again ???
I rolled into bed and continued watching The Crown, while Ulick caught up on some work, YES WORK!!
PS – McDonalds. Yes this will be a blog of its own. I have been trying McChicken’s in each country! So far the Netherlands is still in front.
