Venice


Photos 19 - 33 out of 33 | Back to Albums
Another cool canal. Are you getting sick of these yet? Do they start to all look the same? Haha We make our way - finally - to the main tourist drag leading towards St Marks Square. It's busy, packed with souvenier hawkers, buskers and gondola drivers. I'm keeping my eye out for the Bridge of Sighs which is around here somewhere... ...and of course, once again everything is covered in scaffolding! Uaargh! So I don't really have a good photo of the famous bridge, although I did see it. More interesting was the way all the advertising completely detracted from the experience. Granted, the advertising was only in place to cover up the ugly scaffolding. But then, I'm not sure if I like the plain scaffoldign or the bill boards better. Anyway, still can provide a bit of history on the bridge. The reason it is called the Bridge of Sighs, is apparently because in the old days, condemned prisoners who were being marched to the prison would often apparently be heard 'sighing' as they crossed this bridge - it would often be the last time they would see the magnificent view and canals of Venice. We had seen a bridge modeled off this back in Cambridge in England, and apparently there is a third somewhere also (Vegas, USA I think?).
Walking down the main waterfront, we see more reconstruction work happening. In nearly every photo I have of St Marks Square, I have 'Jaws' staring at me. There was this really cool church near the entrance to the main square, very intricate paintings and sculpture work. Well actually there were awesome churches all through Venice, problem was that they were so big, and the laneways so small, that you could never get far enough back to take a good photo of any of them. St Marks Square is easily the biggest square in Venice and stretches a fair way back.
The club cap money shot! Bloody hell! (Sorry, not about the photo, just that the Vindaloo I'm eating right now as I type this is REALLY bloody spicy! Where'd I put that Kronenberg...) Randomly as we were walking away from St MArks Square, I found this cute little broom stick - a REAL old fashioned broom with old branches strapped to a rough wooden pole! So we played 'bedknobs and broomsticks' followed by a bit of Quidditch and finishing with some street sweeping. The locals thought it was very amusing! Walking back to the train station (ever so gradually), we followed the main drag back and eventually saw one of the larger bridges in Venice, the Rialto Bridge.
This is one of only 3 main bridges that crosses the Grand Canal, so you can imagine it gets pretty busy at times. To make it easier for all the pedestrian traffic, the Italians have set up 100's of market stalls up each side and down the middle of the bridge... Underneath the Rialto Bridge is one of many locations you can find a gondola for hire. Not cheap - be prepared to pay about 75 euros for a decent trip, but you do get the whole boat for that much and can have anywhere from 1 to 6 people I think. I reckon it would be ideal with just two people 🙂 🙂 I thought, if only these gondola drivers were wearing read striped shirts, we could call them all Wally. The good old Grand Canal - this is the view from the top of the Rialto Bridge.
After a long day of walking, I was keen for a tipple, and we found all these great wines for about 4 euros per bottle. So naturally, I stocked up. The orange stuff there is called Bellumi, it's like a fruity cocktail wine, I think peach or apricot flavoured. It's an Italian specialty and was pretty popular around Verona and Venice. And naturally... :) Nearly at the end, we find a nice little gelato shop - this one is apparently recommended by Lonely Planet, and Michelle insists she could use one. I am not going to say no either. At first the bloke behind the counter seems really great, as I purchase my 3 scoop waffle cone... I should have listened to some advice that Gab apparently also gave us before we left. Get a receipt for everything you buy. Fair dinkum, the bloke tried to double charge Michelle for both our treats, when clearly I had already paid my 3 euros. But he must have been off in Disneyland and not paying attention. So we have a small arguement in broken English, and Michelle gets her money back, but then he insists that I pay for mine, and we are literally arguing for 20 minutes, because there was no doubt that he was either suffering from the attention span of a goldfish, or he was trying to rip us off. Though he continued to imply that I had not paid for my icecream, we won in the end, but it left us with a bad taste in our mouths that not even the gelato could wash away. The bottle of red certainly did though... And the train trip home. A great day really, except the lasting drizzle that made everything misty, and the run in with the gelato guy fresh on my mind, I was glad to be getting out of there and just wanted to get my arse back home so I could go to Sweden the next day. As Indiana Jones didn't quite put it: Ahh F#!@ken Venice!
   
Photos 19 - 33 out of 33 | Back to Albums
Description: After visiting the beautiful city of Verona, we'd seen pretty much everything there was to see within a day, so Michelle convinced me that a random day-trip to Venice was in order! Venice was lovely - great shopping, plenty of canals and good food and photo opportunities. Despite crap drizzly weather, we both had a great day, until we ended up in a sticky gelato situation...
Location: Italy

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