Avventura Felice 2012: On to the land of Carnivale, Glass and Gondolas

First of all, let me apologize for my delay in posting. It seems most days we are busy and by the time we get back to our hotel, I do not have the wit or energy to post the blog. Also, uploading pictures was taking so long that I would doze off. I am trying something different with this entry, I have compressed the photos before inserting them, so let me know if the quality has deteriorated too much. Now (in the words of Paul Harvey).................here's the rest of the story.

After 3 nights in Ravenna, it was time to move on to the land of carnivale, glass and gondola's, Venezia or Venice as we know it. The distance to travel was again not too far, but we took our usual 5 to 6 hours to complete it. We only made one stop along the way, a interesting church we saw along the way. It was a one time monastery. A couple of pictures from it, and a couple of fauna seen there as well.

This little guy is growing a new tail

his bigger brother

Some strange bugs we saw

We got to our hotel in Mirano, about 15 km from Venice early in the day (4 o'clock) and settled in for a 3 night stay. What a confusing place to find as there was a Mirano, Murano and Mirana, all within a few kms of each other. We took a walk around the downtown area, and then were in for an early night. The next day we caught a bus to Venice, about an hour's ride away. The morning was nice, but the afternoon quickly deteriorated into steady rain, and a cold wind coming off the water. Venice is an interesting and different city to be in. There is not just one island that makes up Venice, but it is a collection of several small islands, plus several outer islands. The "streets" are canal, the main one being the Grand Canal, winding it’s way through the city. There are many smaller canals that connect to the Grand Canal creating “side” streets. Pedestrian travel is by walking the connecting alleyways in and around the city or by public transit which is a boat passenger ferry system. The boats are called vaporettos. People also use gondolas to cross from one side of the grand canal to the other. They cost .50 cents. You can tell the locals because they often just stand up while making the crossing. Then there are the tourist gondolas. They cost about 80 Euros for about a half an hours ride. Private taxi boats also ferry passengers around at a minimum of 70 Euros. Our choice of ride was the vaporetto at a cost of 28 Euros each for two days, we were able to travel all over as much as we wanted.

Traffic was very busy

It was a tight fit under some of the bridges

This lady is clearly a local - no sitting for her

Again it was culture week, and the place was inundated with school tour groups. Before the rains chased us a way for the day, we went to St Mark’s Square but did not get into the church because the lines were so long. We met another couple there considering whether to go in or not. They had been in Venice for 2 days, staying in one of the neighbourhoods away from the center. This was their first time to the center and they could not believe the number of people. They were ready to go back to their quiet little neck of the woods. We did some walking around the town for awhile before heading home. The waterways were as busy as the streets with boats everywhere. It is amazing they didn’t run into each other, but it was clear that everyone knew the rules of the water. Here are some pics from our first day.

Some of the many different types of working boats we saw.

Haulage boats