The Canals of Venice!
Across Austria to Venice
After all that walking the day before, we were so thankful
for a down day travelling on our bus looking out the window at all the
beautiful sights and visiting with our friends!
Crossing into Italy, we stopped at a lovely Italian village for lunch. Later for our afternoon break we experienced
our first rest stop called an Autogrill!
These rest stops are not like what we have at home! There were decadent food stations galore and
huge seating areas and coffee bars and gift shop areas! This was eye opening!
Arrival in Venice!
Finally
“ a dream comes true moment arrived! “
We boarded the vaparato on the Grand Canal in Venice heading to the
Rialto Bridge where we disembarked and navigated our way through narrow
streets to our hotel! Packing light made this much easier! Keith gave us some good advice to just bring our back packs and leave our cases on the bus. We arrived at our hotel which was just a few steps away from St. Mark's Square. Then after
freshening up, Uncle Keith (as he had now come to be known to us) led the way to St.
Marks Square.
Venice - St Mark's Square
At St. Mark's square, St Mark’s Basilica and the Doge's Palace are located side by
side with the bell tower directly across from them. These were incredible sights to behold for the very first
time! After a walk around the square we got together for another
amazing lively group dinner. We were all
getting quite comfortable with each other by this point so we all had some good
laughs - so much so that we were told by the restaurant manager to "Settle Down"! (Julie standing up on her chair video recording and Becky another tour member chanting "Uncle Keith" didn't help matters any!). Oh well just another Rick Steves tour hav'n fun! With the night still young and the sun just setting our group boarded gondolas for a romantic trip down the canals of Venice. How excited we were to share the gondola with the musicians together with Jim and Kay from our group who also had the same anniversary as us, in fact were celebrating their 25th anniversary too.
Our Day in Venice
The next morning we enjoyed a very informative stroll around Venice with our local guide Elisabetta. The highlight for us was the mask making store. There, Zach from our group “volunteered” to try on all the different masks. It was fascinating to witness the making of a Venetian mask from scratch, and then to see such exquisite beauty emerge as the finished product. Next stop: St. Mark's Basilica! Wow - the inside was spectacular and our Rick Steves tour's arrival time was perfectly planned to coincide at the very hour the lights turn on to illuminate all the thousands of mosaics! The lights made everything come to life. After visiting St. Marks’s Basilica with the group, we enjoyed some free time where we headed to the Rialto Bridge and enjoyed a scrumptious pizza lunch beside the Grand Canal. With our Rick Steves audio guide, we toured the Frari Church and then enjoyed some gelato before we toured the Doge’s Palace. We joined up with the group for a meal of “Cicchettis” (appetizers) where we visited three different tapa bars and savoured every little mouthful. Finally we capped the evening off enjoying a Spritz on St. Mark's Sq. listening to the musicians around the square. Special times!
Venetian Cuisine - It did not disappoint!
Old World Charm of Venice
There are endless ways to find the Old World Charm in Venice, for us some special moments were spent having lunch on the Grand Canal, meandering the back alleys of Venice interwoven among canals and bridges, and spending a few moments listening to the musicians in St. Mark's Sq. on a summer evening.