Venice.Day 2-3

We were back to Venice by 11a.m. and the first thing we did was to buy daily ticket for vaporetto (i.e. boat service). As our budget was a bit limited for the gongola ride, this was the substitute we got for the water trips around the city. And definitely it was worth it and fit 2 purposes - transportation and sightseeing ones.

The boat ride to the hotel place stop took around 40min and we were happy to see Venice from a totally different perspective. The main channel after we passed under Rialto bridge looked stunning and my sigma allowed me to take several good shots.

We got out next to Santa Maria della Salute which looked as magnificent from the land as it looked from the water. We dived into several streets and reached the street along the channel with the hotel booked for our stay. The room was simple but it had what had been promised and for what we had paid several euros on top - a channel view (smile).

In the nearby restaurant we had a pizza and a beer and walked all the way to St.Marco square across the main channel and following the sign and major tourist flows. We crossed the square and headed straight away up the Campanile di San Marco tower.

The views opened in front of us were breathtaking... Actually I think those were the best "city tower" views out of all my trips around Europe! You couldn't see the channels but the square and the city looked incredible...

and the Adriatics and islands and... and... and...

After all the incredible feeling of presence in an incredible city we walked along the shore and caught the boat to fulfil someone's very very stong desire...

We arrived to Lido di Venezia island and in 15 minutes were already on the public beach ready to have our first swim in 2010... Water seemed a bit not perfectly clean but perfectly warm but the feeling of being in Venice, lie on the sand and swimming in Adriatics was magnificent!!!

We decided not to go back to Venice straight away and caught the boat to Burano, one of the islands outside the city which was recommended by a friend of ours. Will skip this part here as this small island deserves a short but still a separate post (smile).

When we were back to Fundamenta Nuove it was already getting dark. We had a very tasty Italian dinner right next to the sea and walked back to St.Marco square.

The streets were getting empty and the square itself didn't seem very crowded in the evening, very different from all the top European tourist spots. The main concentration of people groups were in or around the outside restaurants which had the stage with musicians... And this was really cool. We sat nearby and listened for some time classic music which was the prefect evening "thing" and even more perfect was to move around the corner and listen to live jazz music, watch people dancing and watch the huge orange full moon...

When they finished playing we went for a walk around the night city aiming to final some nice place next to some channel to drink a bottle of red wine which I had bought on the Lido island. I guess that in the end all the positive emotions needed to be brought down somehow and the night Venice was the thing to do so. Nothing much impressive, almost no lights on the streets and no people, no loud places and nothing really special to do... It might have been that we had searched in the wrong places (smile).

But still the day ended perfectly as we found a great spot on the gondola quay next to the main channel and the bridge and there were even some lights on some of the building reflecting in the still sea waters. We drank the wine, talked a lot about life, how happy we were with it and with the fact that we had met each other, with the things we have in common (like travelling) and some things we see differently... Great moments!..

We didn't have much time to do anything before catching our flight back to Prague, so we just had a 40min. boat ride back to Piazza di Roma... It was early and the city looked a bit sleepy and foggy - a much nicer state than evening "nothingness" (smile).

We spent our last money on the coffee in a local place and on the souvenirs for friends and family. After an hour sleep in the bus we were already in the airport ready to flight away from all the great dreams we had in Venice... And those dreams were really sweet...