Above the Piazza San Marco
A ride in a gondola
Day 7: Wednesday, April 11, 2007
The Most Beautiful City in the World
Venice is called "the most beautiful city in the world" for good reason. Cars are banned and the city is made up of narrow walking paths between buildings and canals filled with gondolas and other types of boats. It's as if the entire city is floating.
We slept in a bit on day 7 and ate pizza for a late breakfast. We headed over toward Piazza San Marco, one of Venice's main attractions. Piazza San Marco is a huge plaza surrounded by ancient buildings, one of them is the Basilica di San Marco. We stood in line and entered the Basilica, which is a huge church and museum. We spent about 2 hours looking in awe at the ancient relics.
We walked around the Piazza a bit more, then were approached by a gondolier while crossing one of the many bridges throughout Venice. We talked him down to 70 euro for 1/2 an hour (we probably still got ripped off) and hopped in. The ride was awesome. We wound our way through the little side canals, taking in Venice from a whole new perspective. We pulled a bottle of wine out of our backpack, borrowed some plastic cups and made the trip even more memorable.
For dinner, the Fodder's guide recommended a little "hidden gem" of a restaurant and it turned out to be just that. We walked around for over an hour looking for this place and finally resorted to another restaurant called 40 Ladroni (40 Thieves, we think). The food turned out to be great. Shea and Tommy both got spaghetti carbonara, which is spaghetti noodles tossed with ham and eggs. Courtney and Nick ordered gnocchi with tomato and crab. For the second course we all shared "jumbo" shrimp, which turned out to be more "mini" than "jumbo." They weren't the best shrimp we've had, but were still good.
After dinner we made our way to the train station to purchase tickets and catch a ride to our respective locations. Shea and Tommy were scheduled to head to Milan to visit Caitlin and the Weynands were set to visit Eric's place in Bologna. This is where it all went horribly wrong. We got so caught up in dinner that we missed the last train. Now we were forced to head out the following morning and needed a place to stay for the night. We went to an Internet café and looked up a few hostels. After much digging around, we found a place and started walking. When we arrived 20 minutes later we were informed that they were closed. In fact, it turns out that all hostels are closed in Venice until the summer rolls around. We hit the streets looking for a cheap hotel and came across one called Hotel Abazzia that had a couple rooms available.
In celebration of our find we went to get some gelato then called it an early night.