Landing in Italy was wonderful after experiencing a cold snap in London for the past week and being somewhat miserable. It was warm and I was stripping off layers in the VERY expensive taxi ride from the airport. I wasn’t just rugged up because it was cold but because we were overweight with our luggage yet again.
We were staying at the All Seasons hotel in Marghera, which is a 10-minute bus ride into town and free if you just jump on the bus and don’t pay like we did on several occasions. The hotel was the only one available without a ridiculous price tag to match. The America’s Cup yacht race was on in Venice, which is our main motivation to go to Venice in the first place. However that one event pushes the price up on every hotel so staying in Venice city really isn’t an option.
We did spend the week in Venice city walking around getting lost usually arriving just in time for lunch (baguettes and sweets) and leaving late in the evening. There is sunlight until 9pm – 9.15pm at night, which is perfect, giving us plenty of time to see the sights without rushing around.
Other then roaming around taking photo’s, we took the magical gondolier ride around the canals (very romantic) and ate way too much food and vino. The restaurants are expensive in Venice and we only worked out at the end of our stay that most charge a cover charge per person to sit down and enjoy a meal or drink. In the end we just bought our $3 baguettes and $3 glasses of wine and walked around. We spent the Friday on the spectator boat watching the fleet races for the Cup. After 5 hours on a boat we headed back to the Harbor getting autographs and photo’s with the sailors and drinking more vino.
The second or third night in Italy I woke up to the room shaking and quickly woke Al while we experienced our first earthquake in Italy. This one was a 5.9 or 6 and was pretty scary. Things were not falling off tables or anything like that as the earthquake was hundreds of kilometers away but still wasn’t a nice feeling. We have had 2 more since then and all seem to be when we are sleeping!