Venice – Day 4

We reached Venezia St. Lucia station on the morning of Aug 17th. The train was delayed by 30 minutes and we were waiting in Mestre station for almost 30 minutes. There were no announcements in neither Italian nor English language. The Venice Station had the baggage drop facility that was very helpful for us. Since we had to come to the station to catch our train to Rome on Aug 18th evening, we felt it was a good choice to leave the heavy bags at the station.

The ferry was right outside the station and it was very delightful to see the city in the midst of the water. Mani got the ferry pass that actually worked quite well for us. The pass costs 23 euro per person and valid for 36 hours. The commute to all the places in the Venice is via Ferry service, water taxi’s or walks. A single travel by ferry would cost 6.5 Euro per person. You can pretty much go to every island here in Venice by ferry. The water taxi’s on the other hand costs pretty high and I would recommend the Ferry service for anyone visiting Venice

It’s a 10 minute travel time via the ferry to the hotel stop from the railway station. Our Hotel was a 5 minute walk from the Rialto Bridge. Venice has several bridges within the city and Rialto is a pretty old bridge and very famous in the city. The bridge itself is very romantic and you see people at all ages gathered at this bridge overlooking the Grand Canal.

The check-in time was only at 2 PM, so we dropped our bags at the hotel and headed out to visit few places in Venice. The streets are pretty narrow and every street is filled with shops and restaurants.

San Marco Basilica was the first place we saw in Venice – This is the top most spot in Venice and you can see much of the crowd in this place. It’s a famous church and a tower located right opposite to the church. There are lot of shops & restaurants and filled with people until midnight.

It was lunch time and we were looking for good restaurant to eat. I really wanted to try some Asian food and being without rice for 6 straight days was becoming little difficult for me

We are in Venice – Pizza & Pasta are the primary ones – what else we can get here :-). We found a good Italian place and had the home made noodles with Pesto sauce and Mani had the Pizza – The quality of the food was really great and the pasta sauce tasted so yummy.

Murano Island – A beautiful island in Venice and takes at least 30-45 minutes via the ferry . There is a glass museum in this island. We visited this island in the evening and took a nice stroll across the island.

After the Murano visit, we took the Ferry No: 42 that covered the rest of the islands in Venice. We took the San Marcula stop and visited the St. Mark’s Basilica square again at night time. The entire place was so beautiful to watch at the night time with few restaurants’ showcasing their musicians playing very nice music. The night walk at the Rialto Bridge was a different experience and it took me back to 10 years past when Mani and I spent our first visit to the Chennai Marina Beach before Marriage. We sat down near the bridge and had ice creams – Totally a beautiful time to end our first day in Venice