Today was Michelle’s birthday. What a perfect place to spend a birthday!
After getting the train into Venezia Santa
Lucia, we saw the Orient Express awaiting departure at the platform. That train looks like a must do experience, but when I looked it up online afterwards, it only travelled from Venice to Paris. Not sure why it's still called the Orient Express anymore?
So after returning to the reality where we wouldn't be going on a $5,000 train trip in 1st class luxury, we grabbed one of the public ferry boats to San Marco Piazza. Now this is a great way to travel around
Venice. Unless you are super rich. Then you'd be in an overpriced water taxi or a gondola.
What a place. We just walked around the square with the church bells ringing, wandered around down little streets and alongside canals, past countless shop windows full of Murano glass, watched the gondolas glide along, the gondolier singing, stopped off at little cafés in squares with kids playing and drank Aperol or beer or coffee. Heaven. Michelle picked up some lovely paintings as well as her birthday present.
In a busy narrow little road off San Marco we found a
nice little lunch spot, where I had juicy, tasty grilled scampi and a big boot
of beer. All beer should be served in a
boot! Das Boot!
Our afternoon was more of the heavenly
same: wandering around the streets, exploring here and there, stopping for
drinks every now and then.
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| The Bridge of Sighs |
I found a little restaurant on one of the
canals for dinner, after much searching.
Seemed that this end of Venice is a bit short on dinner
restaurants. I had a juicy grilled bream,
which as seems the tradition in Venice, the waitress filleted in front of me at
the table.
Thunderstorms rolled in across Venice
during dinner, and we were glad we had chosen to eat inside. Some had braved the
terrace and yet seemed to avoid a drenching sitting under the large umbrellas, though the poor
waitress serving didn’t fare so well.
The storms continued as we made our way
back, with lightening illuminating the sky as we rode the water taxi; the
captain seemed to take great delight in banging the rear of the ferry into each
jetty with a shuddering thud as he departed.
Our host had kindly given us a bottle of
wine in celebration of Michelle’s Birthday, but we were completely stuffed for
the evening, so would keep it for a night at our next destination, Florence!
More photos of our day in Venice are here. Quite a few, sorry.
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