We had to get up early and be at breakfast by 7am as the bus was leaving at 7:30. Becky remarked how it would be nice when we get back to Rome and don’t have to worry about setting an alarm clock in the morning. We rode over the Apennine Mountains to Bologna. The mountains were very pretty – very green and covered with trees. There will little towns sprinkled throughout the valleys as we went through tunnels and bridges up to a peak of 2,400 feet.
We stopped in Padua about 11am. The town square is different than the other towns we had seen – it’s very open. Padua is the home of St. Anthony, so we headed over to his colossal church complex. They had his tomb there as well as his relics which included some impressive gold chalices. After a walk through the church we had a little free time, so we walked along the quiet streets and stopped for lunch at an inexpensive place on the corner in front of the church. We had been heeding the lesson of my brothers who told me “Do Not Buy Cheap Food”. We didn’t listen this time and Becky ended up with a 2 Euro pizza which was badly microwaved and I had some lasagna that tasted okay but my stomach didn’t appreciate it for the rest of the afternoon.
I have always wanted to see Venice because there’s no other city like in the world. As you approach Venice it’s pretty industrial and not terribly impressive. We went over the bridge onto the island in the lagoon. As soon as we got there we had to disembark and give our luggage away – there were porters who took our luggage to our hotel. I asked our guide where we were staying but he just said we’ll get there at 6:15 or so after we go to St. Mark’s square and meet our local tour guide. We waited for a minute for our transportation to arrive – it was a water taxi – essentially an open speedboat. We raced down a back canal into the grand canal and then over to St. Mark’s square. Along the way, we had stopped at a rest area and we saw 5-6 other buses full of tourists headed to Venice, so I knew it was going to be busier, but it was even busier than I had expected. St. Mark’s square was packed. We made a rendez-vous with our guide, Louisa, in front of the Doge’s Palace where Venice was ruled as an independent state. The Palace was very impressive and Louisa did a good job of explaining everything to us. Venice was self-governed for 600 years – 1197-1797 and they had acquired a lot of paintings and gold which adorned the senate and judicial rooms. We walked over the “Bridge of Sighs” which leads to the prison next door. After the palace we walked over to St. Mark’s church and saw the huge line of people waiting to get in. Louisa asked us if we wanted to wait in line or pay 1 Euro to get in right away. We all agreed to pay the Euro and she ushered us through the middle doors immediately instead of waiting for 20-30 minutes otherwise. St. Mark’s tomb is inside the church along with the (what was getting customary) artwork and sculptures.
We had a few hours to roam on our own after that, so we walked to the Rialto Bridge and stopped at the Disney Store to get something for our girls. By the time we got to the bridge (which wasn’t that far away) we were too exhausted to do anything else, so we just had our customary snack of gelato and headed back. Throughout this walk the small alleys were packed with people, and fancy shops. We sometimes had to wait a few minutes to get through to our destination due to the crowds. We took a water taxi back to our hotel from there. I asked again about the hotel and our guide said it was on the Grand Canal, so that sounded good to me. I was thoroughly impressed with this hotel (especially compared to the Hotel Grifone in Florence), the Hotel Continental. It was on the canal (2 bonus points), near other shops and stuff to do (1 bonus point), had breakfast downstairs (1 bonus point), had a decent sized room and the best of all – had free Internet access (10 bonus points).
We had dinner with our crew so we talked about Control Line model planes with the Australians and I practiced my French with the Lebanese couple. Dinner was good, although we had a fixed menu with salted codfish for the entree – Becky wasn’t a big fan. We got a little tipsy from our bottle of wine and our “welcome drink” champagne. After dinner we went with the group (minus the Lebanese) to a nearby bar for a drink. It was getting close to midnight by then, so we headed back to the room to call the girls.
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