Day 4 - Venice

This morning I left Brett in bed and went for an early morning wander. Got myself a coffee and croquette for brekkie and ate it by a canal, aah, la dolce vita. A beautiful clear morning, and so nice to wander Venice without crowds. I queued for St Mark's Basilica and got right to the door before deciding it wasn't where i wanted to be, so I headed back to the hotel to check on Brett. He was feeling much better, so after a quick shower we headed out together. Brett noticed an open door to a church along the way so we stopped in there for a bit, just lovely. Then, having noticed earlier that the queues weren't too bad, we headed to the Bell Tower in St Marks Square. You can't take the stairs these days, so not the usual risk of me giving myself an injury! What a glorious view of Venice from up there! Time to catch up with the Tonies for the afternoon, and we found a wee trattoria for a birthday lunch, before meandering our way to the Peggy Guggenheim museum. Always a bit mind blowing that over here you can get right up close with Picasso, Braque, Miro, Mondrian, Dali, Pollock, etc. It's still hot, so back to the hotel for an afternoon siesta, then a last goodbye to Venice with birthday dinner in a courtyard restaurant close to the opera house. After a tricky start Venice is still Venice, a very special place. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Day 9 - Farewell Korcula, Hello Hvar

After a good night sleep, we had some breakfast onboard and got ready to head back into Korcula for a guided walking tour of the city. Although we’d had a wander around the the evening, the tour was definitely worthwhile - we got a really knowledgeable guide with a very dry sense of humour, and the city was quite a different place without so many people (most of the cruise ships that had been in the previous day had left). We did a bit more wandering after the tour, just to make sure we’d seen everything and then it was back onboard the ship for lunch - three courses! I think we could very easily get used to the idea of lazing around on a boat and having everything done for us….. While we lunched the captain sailed us out of Korcula and up the coast to the island of Hvar. Another walking tour of the old city - again, well worth it (we’ve officially become those disoriented looking tourists that you see wandering around with earpieces in, trying to keep up with the guide). Onto a bus to...
Read more

Day 30 - Cinque Terre

Image
An early start again today as we had a bit of travelling to get to our pesto making class. First a taxi to the train station and then over an hour on the train to get to Cinque Terre where the class was scheduled to start at 10:30. Unfortunately, the whole scheduling and ticketing thing with the trains is not straightforward so when we realised that we’d missed our stop and tried to double back, it was the start of a bit of an issue. We’d left plenty of time to get to Cinque Terre but when we went to the ticket office to try and get back to the correct station, the queue was nearly out the door. Barb tried to order new tickets online but that also seemed to be taking forever. We decided to just board the next train going back (so that we’d at least be on time) but that’s when it all came to a head - we got sprung by the conductor and despite trying to show that we’d tried to buy online tickets, we got a hefty fine. Although it was pretty rubbish, we didn’t have a lot of choice so we tr...
Read more

Day 24 - Last day in Puglia

Image
There were no solid plans for today because the weather forecast was for stormy weather all day. But looking again at the weather apps over breakfast, the report was for fine weather for most of the region (and by just looking out the window, it seemed that the day wasn’t going to be that bad). Barb did some online research to find a recommended beach nearby, and since we had food left from our visit to the supermarket a few days before, we thought a picnic would be a good idea. After making sure our ferry tickets were booked for our trip across to Capri tomorrow, we gathered everything up and set off to find a sunny spot with a bit of sand and some surf. Mission accomplished - we spent a few hours at a beach just south of Monopoli enjoying the sun, having a swim, and eating alfresco. The perfect way to end our time in Puglia - although it is another reminder of how lucky we are in NZ with our number and quality of sandy beaches. After drying off, we all piled back into car to take a ...
Read more