Lost in Venice

Aloha..hehe.. I felt like I'm at a wrong place. Currently I'm in Venice, the third stop of our euro trip and third last stop of the trip as well. Venice is totally different to what we expected (except for the lots of water part). We thought that Italy would be a bit warmer it's located south of Europe, but when we reached here, it was snowing. We were totally wrong. 

I think throughout this trip we were not that lucky with transportation. The other day, on our way to Gatwick Airport, there was a bit of problem with the bus. Then on our way to Paris, the problem with the train. This time, on our way to the airport at Paris, there's a delay with the train heading to the airport. We took the train near our hotel and we were supposed to change train at Aulnay saus-Bois for the airport train. However, when we reached Aulnay saus-Bois, the airport train was supposed to arrived in 3 minutes, but we waited for nearly 45 minutes before the train arrived. Upon arrival at the airport, we ran as fast as we can to the check in counter as it was nearly the time for the check in counter to close. The airport has so many terminal and we nearly got lost. We felt like amazing race, trying to get to the check in counter in time. Luckily, we managed to make it to the check in counter and we were the last one to check in the flight no hassle. We were very thankful or else, we might have missed our flight to Venice.

Passing Swiss Alps on the way to Venice

 The flight from Paris to Venice Marco Polo took about 1hour and 50 minutes. Upon arrival in Venice, we took the shuttle bus from the airport to the island which costs 3 euro one way and the journey takes about 30 minutes. Then we checked in our hotel, prayed and came out for a walk. At Venice, we stayed at Hotel Alle Guglie located at Cannaregio. It costs us 170 euro for 2 nights for 3 people including breakfast. The designed of our room was very classic. It felt like we were living in the classic Venetian era.

Our accommodation in Venice

Our Venetian Room

Later that afternoon, we decided to explore the island. The island was not that big. 3 hours and we have made 1 round of the island. Venice is made up of small islands separated by canals and connected by bridges. That's why you can see lots o small bridges here and the lanes are very narrow. No cars can pass here, everything is suitable for pedestrian only. Even the garbage truck is manually handled where a person used a big trolley to collect all the rubbish and he will push the trolley. Due to many small alley, we decided to just get lost on this island. We walked down various alley without any specific destination and just see where the alley lead us to.

small tunnel

Small alley

Small islands connected by bridges

The water here in Venice is green and pretty. The buildings are old school and very nice to see that they preserve the old Italian building here. One of the famous thing here are Murano glass and masks. Nearly every souvenir shop will sell these items. Not forgetting leather items. But the leather items here are quite expensive. I was thinking of buying a leather handbag, but the design that I liked costs about 80 or 90 euro. The other famous thing in Italy is gelato. The gelato looks so yummy but it was too cold to have it.

Santa Clause climbing of the building

How Venetian hang their laundry

Various types of mask can be found here.

Must see places here in Venice includes St Mark Square, Basilica San Marco, Rialto Bridge, Sant' Elena, Grand Canal and Constitution Bridge. Venice is also famous for its gondola, but we did not try that.

St Mark's Square

Basilica San Marco

Sant' Elena

The entrance to Venice via Constitution Bridge

The view from Constitution Bridge

Lido Island

Grand Canal from Rialto Bridge

In terms of language, the people here speaks Italian. For us, we pretend that we understand the language when we know nothing about it. hehe. Luckily most shop owners here know how to speak English. Venice is a very calm and peaceful city. But you might get bored if you stayed here for too long. The TV channels here only have shows in Italian. Even if they are showing American drama or movies, it will be dubbed in Italian. So we ended up watching MTV here or cartoon even though its still in Italian.

This is it from Venice, Next stop is Rome, will post the story soon.
Till then~