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| Getting Our Passports Stamped! |
We departed Los Angeles for Italy on Saturday evening at 7... We arrived in Venezia Sunday evening at 8 - covered in plane grime, a little cranky, but so excited to start exploring and taking in the sinking city. We instantly looked like mega-tourists with our cameras flashing and our 20 giant suitcases (20 might be a slight exaggeration - but just barely). Our water taxi driver asked us if we were staying for a year! After finding our appartamento, we dropped off our bags and set out to have our first Italian meal... pizza in the piazza. Afterwards, we found a gelateria and had our first scoop of Italian gelato. And we vowed then and there that we would have a scoop of a different flavor every day of our trip! (Today's flavor: Pistacchio - YUM) Then we came back to relax and get rested for the long days ahead.
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| First Glimpse of the Canale Grande |
Our first full day in Venice, we walked. And walked. And then walked some more. All of the guide books we had read and the locals we talked to had said we needed to just "get lost" in Venice, so that's what we did! We explored every alleyway, nook, canal and staircase we could find. We came across a little cafe where the sweetest Italian man we met gave us free strawberry wine, margherita pizza and tiramisu. He also gave us chalk to write our names in the street...
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| We Were Here! |
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| Little Canal |
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| Resting Our Feet |
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| Getting "Lost" |
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| Amazing Fruit Market |
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| Ponte di Rialto |
Once our feet were too tired to carry us any further, we returned to the apartment to take a siesta before dinner. This became a tradition for the rest of the trip.
When in Rome (or Venice) - right?!
That night we decided to venture in the opposite direction for dinner, which was more pizza and pasta of course! Then we made the super intelligent decision to keep going further away from our apartment without our street map, in the dark, in the hopes that we would just be able to circle around when we got tired of walking and find our way back. Bad choice. We gave the term "getting lost in Venice" a whole new meaning! And we learned that Venice really has
zero nightlife - the entire city shuts down at about 10pm. So we were the ONLY people out roaming the canals that night, and I'm sure we woke some folks up with our voices shouting directions at each other when a couple of us would take a wrong turn and wind up in a dead end alley. We finally had to resign ourselves to the fact that we were not very good navigators, turned around and re-traced the entire night's path to find our way home. A good night was had by all! (Today's gelato flavor: Coconut - Favorite of the whole trip!!)
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| Piazza San Marco |
The next day, we decided to give our feet a rest, so we took a water taxi over to the little island of Lido and spent a relaxing day at the spiaggia - aka, the beach! We had our daily gelato there (Flavor: Melone - tastes like canteloupe, and is oh so good!), and saw some topless sunbathers as well as many, many speedos, which made me even more thankful that most American men embrace board shorts as the swim suit standard! That night, we stayed closer to home, eating dinner right alongside the grand canal and then returning to the apartment to get ready to leave for Rome the following morning....
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| Sisters in our cute new Italian bikinis! |
The adventure continues in part 2...
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