Wednesday Day Four Italy

Yesterday we were scheduled to travel from Venice to Rome. I wanted to take some final photos of the awesome breakfast buffet we had every day while we were in Venice. This is merely an example. Patrick and I had cappuccino daily. There was also bacon, eggs, and some other sort of entree. Yesterday's entree was a poached egg with bacon. The other items on my plate are sautéed mushrooms (yum--I love mushrooms), brie, and cheese stuffed in a slice of ham. There was also the usual fruit (peaches, apples, and pineapples), croissants (some were stuffed with fruit), a selection of fruit juices, made-to-order crepes and some type of dessert cake. One day it was tiramisu. Yesterday it looked more of like a pound cake type. I have been forgetting about my diet while we are here in Italy, that's for sure.

To balance that diet out, we have been walking about 20,000 steps daily. Unfortunately, yesterday was a travel day, so I didn't even reach 8,000 steps due to the three hour train ride, but the rest of the time we basically walked all day. Everyone in Venice walks everywhere, since there really aren't any cars. There were lots of narrow "streets" which were basically sidewalks. It was difficult sometimes to figure out how to get to a particular location, because there were so many little side streets and alleys.

This photo shows one of the few times where we rode somewhere instead of walking. The first day we took a water taxi to a location near our hotel and then had to walk the rest of the way with our luggage. We took a vaporetto (like a bus except on the water) to get to Murano island to see the glass-blowing. Our last day we took a vaporetto to get to the train station. We could have walked to the train station, but with our luggage and the potentially crowded streets, we would have had a much harder time getting around.

The photo above shows some sights we saw as we rode down the Grand Canal (main waterway through Venice) towards the train station stop. The buildings had a lot of character. Apparently this made it difficult if anyone wants to do construction, because they have to conform to a certain set of standards, but for the tourist, it makes a picturesque view. Even though it was cloudy and overcast yesterday, the view is still fantastic.

The boats closest to you on the right in the above photo (almost out of view) were "regular" boats that were used as water taxis, more like taxi cabs on water. After that as you move forward in the photo are the gondolas that were mainly for tourists that want to take a ride on the water, but not really as a means to get to point A to point B. Next to the gondolas is something that looks like a bus stop, but instead that is a stop for the vaporetto to unload and load passengers.

This is a photo of our view out the window during our train ride, and it is not a pretty picture, but we imagined that it would be more picturesque if we had taken the train in the summer when everything would be more green. Instead it was cloudy and drizzly, but it was the first chance we had to see something green during our time in Italy. Venice was all stone and sidewalks. So far, Rome has been very urban (more on that tomorrow). There aren't a lot of green spaces here.

Patrick made an error in our travel plans. He thought our train was leaving Venice to head to Rome at 2:10pm. Instead, that was supposed to be the arrival time and we missed our 10:30pm (or so) train to Rome, so we had to buy new tickets for the 12:30pm (or so) train to Rome instead. Patrick was so upset at himself, but this was still earlier than we thought we were going to get there. Anthony's train didn't get in until about 6:30pm, so we hung out at the hotel until he arrived, then we went to a nearby restaurant for dinner. It was all good. We got to where we needed to be. Tomorrow I'll blog about our trip to the Vatican and other rainy day sights in Rome.