Venezia, Take 2

We woke up the next day and Geoff declared that it was Kate Day. Which meant that we could do whatever I wanted to do. Which meant we were going to spend all day in Venice.

After breakfast at the hotel (you know how I love those) we headed into Venice on the train. Our plan was to take the vaporetto (water taxi) from the train station all the way to Piazza San Marco, see it, deal with the tourists for 10 minutes and then get lost in the back streets and back canals. Which is exactly what we did.

Headed into work.


I like to pretend this is our house in Venice


Turning off the Grand Canal into a side "street".


An Italian business lunch.


Venetian parking


Someone's roof balcony


One of my most favorites shots from the whole trip


We looked for this restaurant that a colleague of mine, the wonderful David Cash (who knows many things about many things), recommended - Ristorante al Covo, which was supposed to be amazing. And we finally found it - after asking an Italian brick layer for directions, which he gave us entirely in Italian (and we followed fairly well - at least the first few steps). Unfortunately, we discovered it was closed that day. Sadness.


We did find an adorable little restaurant in a mini-piazza and we had the whole place to ourselves. We enjoyed a wonderful late outdoor lunch and took our time, which was lovely, since we'd had a long morning of picture taking.


Writing in my travel journal



Our waiter was impossibly cool and Italian.


After lunch we did a lot more wandering about and taking pictures.

Actual gondolier


Actual singing gondola ride.


Some locals having a beer


A mirrored window we found


A really cool place to live


We also enjoyed some gelato. This is my favorite picture of Geoff from the whole honeymoon. I think it just says it all. He's married, he has ice cream, he's happy.


We went on a gondola ride, even though it's RIDICULOUSLY expensive and only lasts 20 minutes...how can you not? When in Venice...

View from the gondola


Going under a bridge


That's the Rialto Bridge behind us. Famous for having stores along the bridge. Pretty cool, if slightly Times Squarish.


We had a hard time finding a place we were excited about for dinner, (we wanted outdoor seating, ambiance, reasonable prices and a water view that wasn't a tourist trap. hard-ish to find. at least in the part of town we were in) but ended up at this restuarant at the base of the Rialto Bridge. We had a late dinner and watched the sun set in the distance over the grand canal. Not too shabby.

Quarto d'Altina

We made it to our hotel just outside of Venice (having heard nightmare stories about people lugging suitcases into water taxi's and never actually being able to find their hotel in Venice) by about 5pm. Quarto d'Altina is about 20 minutes from Venice and our hotel was practically right on top of the train station so it was perfect. We decided to venture into Venice for dinner, even though we hadn't planned it (look at me, working outside of the plan - thinking outside of the box! see, i can be spontaneous sometimes!), and we had a drink at the hotel bar while we waited for the next train. They had these cute little pretzels at the bar in the shape of "B", which we liked.


The sun was so pretty at the train station so we took some photos and Geoff tried out the "video" option on my little digital camera he got me as a wedding present. (video to be posted shortly - we're having uploading issues)

We got into Venice and it was REALLY crowded. Like, Times Square crowded. SO much so we couldn't really fully enjoy it, since we didn't want to get lost and not be able to find the train station, so we didn't wade in too far, but we took a few pictures.



We had dinner at a little restaurant that turned out to be a tourist trap and the food wasn't very good, so we tried to find our way back to the train station, but realized we couldn't make it to the train in time for the next one and would have to wait it out an hour. Geoff was a bit disenchanted with Venice at this point, for a variety of reasons, not the least of which was the crowds and the bad food experience, and he was talking about not wanting to come back tomorrow. I couldn't have disagreed more, knowing that Venice had amazing things to offer, if we ventured beyond the tourist traps. And I'm glad to say, I was right....