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The last stop on our cruise, and probably the one I’d been most looking forward to, was Venice.  I’ve always wanted to visit Venice and I’m not really sure why, other than I always thought it sounded very romantic.  Venice was all I was hoping for and more, I thoroughly enjoyed our time there.  We had almost two days there, as we spent our last official cruise day there, stayed on the ship overnight and debarked in Venice the next morning, with all day to enjoy the city some more before catching our train to Paris.

Our first day we just spent exploring, and doing our best to get lost, which, apparently, is what you’re supposed to do in Venice. It wasn’t too hard to do, given all the tiny little alleys we found, but we always seemed to find our way back to a main waterway.  If you’ve never been to Venice, it is such a unique city with canals instead of streets, and everything cars and trucks do here, boats do there. They have boats for cars, buses, taxis, delivery trucks, you name it.  The only way to get around the city is by boat or by foot, so we did a little of both.

Boating in Venice was just as crazy as driving in Rome or Naples.  There are boats everywhere, and no apparent organization to how they navigate in the wider canals, several times it looked as though a boat was on a collision course with us, but we always managed to avoid a crash. It was pretty entertaining, but a bit nerve wracking at times too.

The evening of the first day, we found a little cafe beside the water fairly close to San Marco Square, where we could just sit and people watch. One thing I noticed was there was a fair number of nuns out walking during the evening, that must be when they get out for some exercise.  Understandable, given that their clothing is probably pretty hot.

Some of you know we got married in Las Vegas, and on our wedding evening, we had dinner at the Venetian and went for a gondola ride in the hotel.  I told Alpha that if we ever went to Venice we had to have a gondola ride, so on our second day that was the first order of business (after coffee of course!). The ride was fairly expensive, and we’ re not sure that it was actually as long as advertised, but to me it was worth every penny. I love the feeling of being in a boat, and it was so cool to be in Venice, with the gondolier steering us around, telling us about some of the homes and landmarks.  A couple highlights from the tour were the house where Mozart lived as a young boy, and the hotel that was used in the movie “The Tourist” with Angelina Jolie and Johnny Depp, which we had just watched not too long before. At one point we ended up in a bit of a gondola traffic jam, but for most of our ride there weren’t too many other gondolas around. Some of the canals we went through were fairly narrow, with just inches to spare on the side in some cases.  But our driver was pretty skilled (not sure how long they have to train for the job) and we never hit.

After the gondola ride, we explored a bit more, then decided to head over to Murano Island, which is famous for its glass. We hopped on the bus again (our tickets from earlier were still working) and got another great sightseeing ride on the trip over.  If you’re looking for anything but glass souvenirs on Murano Island, you’re going to be very disappointed.  The little streets are lined with lots of little unique shops, each and every one selling some type of glass.  Many of the stores we went in had absolutely amazing works of art on display, from sculptures to bowls to amazingly intricate and detailed chandeliers. My mission on the island was to find a pair of earrings, and after going in a few shops I found a funky pair with little blown glass balls.

The trip back to Venice was a bit of an adventure, as we discovered that our bus tickets had expired, and there were no ticket dispensers on the island.  There was a sign saying that if you told the bus operator when you got on the bus that you had no ticket, you could just pay the regular fare and not be fined. Which is what we did and all was going well until we realized we didn’t even have enough cash left in our pockets to pay for the bus ticket.  We did a bit of squirming and apologizing (ok a lot of squirming) and the operator said we could just go to a ticket booth when we got back, and then I remembered that Alpha had tucked a 50 euro bill inside his tilley hat for just such an emergency, so we were able to save face a little by paying for the ticket before we got back.

We had a bit of time to kill before catching our overnight train to Paris, so we sat down and had a drink, then I bought one of the giant pink meringues that I had been drooling over all day.  I thoroughly enjoyed it.

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