We had visited Vienna and Florence before coming to Venice…

We had only 3 hours in Venice. It’s an utterly enchanting city. As soon as you step off the railway station, there is water. The public transport is boats. There are floating boat stops instead of bus stops. We decided to go to the Piazza de San Marco (named after Marco Polo). On the way we saw many types of boats plying on the waters of Venice. Police boats, a ferry boat onto which people had driven their vehicles, a small boat with 2 luxurious sofas on it, private little jet boats, a gondola, yachts, a huge ocean liner…

First view of Venice. Other cities have Bus stops, Venice has Boat Stops, you can see one on the right.

As we went to San Marco, we saw houses built right onto the water, with garages for their boats, even a petrol station to fill gas for your boat. In the distance there were even electricity towers and wires strung across them in the middle of the sea!

Power cables across the water

Venice has a beach called the Lido, but we had no time to go there, we walked around the Piazza de San Marco, a huge square flanked on one side by a beautiful old church (it had closed by the time we got there, so couldn’t go in), a tall tower and many shops and restaurants along the other borders. Venice is the city of gold and they are doing major restoration work on her monuments, maybe next year would be a great time to come here and see everything sparkling and new again.

Buildings right on the Water

It was drizzling a fine mist now and then, once it even became a quick concentrated shower, put soon passed and the sun shone brightly just a few moments after. We spent a few hours walking around the square, there was a restaurant called Florin’s which was established in 1720. So people like Mozart or Michelangelo could have eaten there. Everything was of course over priced. I am pretty sure Mozart and Michelangelo must have cribbed about their prices too

Too quickly it was time to leave, as our bus boat made its way back to the railway station, great grey clouds gathered over the city. On the horizon lightning flashed and snaked through the sky, and soon we could hear the majestic boom of thunder.

Bewitching Venice

Just as we were walking into the station, the heavens opened and a veritable downpour began. I think Guruji was holding it back just for us, our train left for Milan while torrential rain was lashing the bewitching city of Venice.

We reached Milan at 10:30 in the night, got into a taxi and went to max’s house. We had a train in the morning out of Milan at 7:10 am, so after a nice hot herbal tea and a bit of chit chat with max, went to bed… early the next day, we made it to the station on time and got into our train and settled for a day of traveling.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, June 17th, 2010 at 10:30 am and is filed under Travel. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.