Final Europe trip, Post 2: Venice by day

Continuing on from the second last post, the next day we headed back to Venice on the ferry for our full day of sightseeing. It was a beautiful sunny day and we spent it wandering fairly aimlessly, shopping for souvenirs, eating gelati, and doing a walking tour with a bunch of other tourists and a nice, short Italian lady who held an orange scarf aloft on a stick so we could find her in the crowd. :)

The tour took a couple of hours and included going through the famous Basilica di San Marco (St Mark's Basilica), which has amazing mosaics both outside and inside, and a rather uneven marble floor (photos not allowed inside). We also saw the Bridge of Sighs, the Rialto Bridge, and of course lots of alleyways, canals, bridges, and gondolas...



This was the second time Ben and I had been to Venice (the first time was during our 2006 trip), and I definitely enjoyed it more this time (last time we couldn't even find the start of the walking tour despite having already paid for it!), but Venice is still Venice... beautiful, old, amazing and colourful... and very touristy! Delle found it amusing that the reasons for Venice being such a unique and famous destination also mean it is a completely impractical place to live... eg. no roads or cars on most of the island, daily garbage collections done by boat etc!

The next day, we picked up our hire car (that was an experience in itself for Ben...!) and set off for our next destination, one that was to become a highlight for us all: Florence, Italy. And until the next entry, goodbye!