Tour of Venice

Venice

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 After the plane comes the water taxi

For someone who does not "do" water i managed the 45 minute trip quite well, clinging to my seat - what an experience!

Luckily there were more pleasant things once we arrived.

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We didn't take a gondola ride (they were too expensive at €80 for 40 minutes in my opinion) but lovely to see all the same, although in parts it was a little funny to see several gondolas all navigating the same path and trying to avoid collision!

Some very pretty less crowded places

The building below is the hospital, i bet there are not many places that can boast that their hospital is housed in such a beautiful building.  I wonder if they have a five hour waiting in A&E, lol

I was not prepared for how busy it would be, just to give you an idea, cruise ships drop off their passengers at St Marks Square, and some days we were told that three ships will drop off  and there could be around five thousand people in and around the square - mad!
We saw one cruise ship pass at St Marks Square, how strange does this look? it filled the view to the square, quite a sight, if you can click on the photo you will see all the people standing looking to the square....crazy!

The Rialto Bridge - see the crowds?



This was just one side, the other side was just as bad, all the time.

To tell the truth, i was a little disappointed with the Rialto Bridge, apart from the very large banner announcing the popes visit (surely they could have sited this somewhere else?)

See the boards to the rear of the shops on the photo below? they all have graffiti on. Now call me picky if you like, but this is the most famous bridge in Venice, and is in effect where it all started, the centre,  so you would think that there would be a little more pride at keeping it clean and tidy - Just my opinion.

You can see how busy the Grant Canal is, this is the best photo i could get of the bridge.



This is looking under the Rialto

I have another little gripe.

The Bridge of Sighs.  Everyone who visits Venice wants to see the Bridge of Sighs, this is what greets you

They have covered the sides of the Doge's Palace (on the left) and the prison (on the right)  with this horrendous cloud/sky boarding.  There is restoration work going on and i know that these building have to be maintained, but come on, surely the advertisers who are paying for the restoration could have come up with something better than this??  And who agreed to such an eyesore? Most disappointing.

See the small bridge in the middle of the photo, the one groaning under the weight of all those people? That is facing the Bridge of Sighs, when prisoners were lead across into the prison their families would stand on that bridge and be able to wave farewell to their loved ones.

OK, you are probably thinking by now that i didn't enjoy Venice, i did enjoy it and there were some lovely things to see.

St Marks Church being one of them

Some pretty views

And to end with the obligatory night photo, this was a bridge quite close to our hotel

I have put a couple of photos here and i will add more there over the next few days if anyone wants to take a look.

Normal service of stitchy updates will follow soon :-)