Ciao Italia!!!

We spent a very pleasant evening in Graz on Wednesday evening (21st), staying in a lovely hotel on the banks of the River Mur and strolling through the Old Town. We found a Greek Trattoria and decided to dine there. We were pleasantly surprised at how lovely the food was and that the owners were in fact of Greek origin. We chatted with the owners and Zoe even made a new friend of the owners’ son, Hercules. Together they played with a ball in the pedestrian zone adjacent to the restaurant (in total view of course) after which the owner was keen to know if Zoe had a dowry. . .a hotel perhaps on one of the Greek Islands???!!!! Good grief!

After some quick shopping for necessities at the supermarket the next morning, we packed up and left Graz for our 4 hour drive to Venice. We took this last opportunity to write down as many new German words as we could to add to Dean’s growing vocabulary list. We certainly did learn lots and lots of new words/phrases!

We finally crossed the Italian border at around 2.30 pm. . .Ciao Italia!!! After another hour and a half we drove into Venice and parked the car at this enormous parking station (as you cannot actually drive into Venice proper). We unloaded deciding to take only one bag) and headed into Venice by “Vaporetto” (the Venetian mode of public transport on water) which took us to the Rialto bridge where we got off and headed for our hotel.

What should have only taken 10 minutes to reach the hotel– took us nearly 45 minutes as we seem to go round in circles fighting our way through the endless waves of people weaving in and out of the narrow walkways !!! It was literally stinking hot and I was glad to see that everyone around us was drenched with perspiration. . .so it wasn’t just us!

Fortunately, our hotel is air-conditioned (not many northern European hotels have this feature – as they don’t normally have to deal with such hot weather) and in no time we had recovered from our journey and were ready to hit the streets of Venice for a look around. There were so many people out and about it was truly amazing. I’ve been here twice before during winter and the difference in crowd levels is amazing!

That said, the kids were in awe and were happy to walk around and soak up the atmosphere. . .dining on pasta and eating gelato for dessert while strolling through Piazza San Marco and along the Grand Canal was amazing!
The next morning, we took the hotel’s complimentary taxi service to the island of Murano (famous for its artisan handmade glass) and toured one of the glass-making factories, taking in a glass-making demonstration and then onto the showroom and retail outlet where you can buy authentic Murano glass to take home. We made some decent purchases and Steven (in usual form) wanted to bargain with the representative for a better price. This naturally caught the attention of the owner who determined that we were Australian (from the rep). The owner was happy to bargain with Steven as it turned out he loves Australia and is visiting extensively next January and therefore wanted to know if we could pay for some of our purchases in Australian dollars? Steven said he could. . .and then the complimentary drinks came forth, after which the owner showed us his travel itinerary for his trip to Australia and then he offered us a tour of his private glass collection (priceless!). Steven was literally in heaven, having successfully bargained for our purchases, got free shipping of the lot back to Australia, a private tour of the owner’s collection AND to top it off, the owner organised a private boat to take us back to San Marco’s after our visit to Murano!! In Steven’s words, “ a great day”!

After more exploring , shopping and a filling lunch, we headed back to the hotel for a siesta and stayed indoors while a brief storm passed over and after things cooled down somewhat we headed back out into the thronging masses for a drink by the Rialto Bridge and later a moonlight walk along the Grand Canal and a quick dinner (at 10.30pm) before turning in for the night.

Saturday (24th) we decided to explore the other side of the Grand Canal, taking in a Gondola ride, then exploring the fresh food markets and fish markets before taking another vaporetto ride along the Grand Canal onto the domed church of Santa Maria della Salute. Back to Piazza San Marco for a relaxing lunch at the famous Café Florian on the Piazza (where we pay for the privilege of listening to some wonderful live music!). In any event. . .it was beautiful!