Italy Vacation - Part 1 Venice

When revolutions happen, lives change.  When Egypt held their revolution, our Egyptian vacation had to take a break.  So, with a few days to prepare, we set out to explore Italy.  Our primary issue was that we have a 5 seat station wagon, but needed to take 6 passengers...so we went the rental route.  We got a 7 seat, Peugeot,  MANUAL mini-van with lots of big windows.  You may ask yourself, why didnt you guys take the train to get everywhere?  Well, we wanted to be as flexible as possible and not get trapped on a late Italian train with whining kids....the van turned out great though, good mpg, good top end on the Autobahn, lots of French-ness.

We set out on a Friday morning and had breakfast south west of Vienna and lunch even further south west.  We stopped mid way to see the village where Arnold Schwarzenegger was from.  It was way off the beaten path outside of Graz.  There were no signs except for an "A" and "S" on the door.  Apparently, only a few tourists come this way in Austria.

As we were taking the motorway southwest into Italy, we crossed the Alps and once over the crest, the sun came out and the air dried out.  The Italian side was very interesting in that there are significant erosion control issues that they must plan for.  The valley floors are all river beds with very few flat places to build.

Once we got down into the plains east of Venice, we got smoked on the motorway by a black Lamborghini as a welcome to Italy.  Turned out to be one of only two really good sports cars we saw the whole trip.  You see more supercars in eastern Europe than in Italy.  We also began to pay the incessant Italian road tolls ending up giving Silvio Berlusconi a couple hundred Euros (at least we know he puts it to good use).

We got into Venice late in the afternoon at our hotel (scored a great Friends and Family rate at a Holiday Inn).  We got a recommendation for a local family pizzeria a few blocks away and went to check it out.  Of course, it being now roughly 6 or so, the restaurant wasnt yet open.  So we hit a gellato stand instead for the first of many ice creams while on vacation.  When we finally hit the pizzeria, we got great pizza and bread and ordered a litre of house red which was on tap.  All was good in the world.

The next morning, we skipped the hotel breakfast (11 Euro each) and ate at the gas station across the way.  For 11 Euro total, we all had something good.  We walked a few blocks away to catch the bus to Venice proper.  Literally we waited one minute and hopped on the bus (the first of very well timed uses of Italian mass transit)....and about 10 minutes later, got off at the main terminal on Venice.  Brian favors punctuality and being a morning person - hence we landed in Venice by about 830 along with the rest of the commuters.

We walked a couple of blocks and purchased 12 hr water transit pass for unlimited use of Venice's boat bus system.  After walking a short bit, figuring out how to get to Murano, we hopped aboard the Murano direct boat and quickly had a nice view of the Alps from the sea.  We stopped in Murano and spent the morning exploring the island of glass makers.  It was sunny but a bit chilly so we stopped for coffee and hot chocolate a few times.  Lots of glass was purchased.  We didnt see much being made (it was early) but the next time we go, we'll definitely explore some of the glass furnaces.  We had a quick few baguettes for lunch and hopped another boat back to Venice.

This boat trip wasnt on a direct boat so we got a good tour of the islands on about a one hour boat ride.  It was a good time for Hayden to take a nap too.  We pulled into San Marco Square and were met with hoards of tourists.  Where we had the sidewalks to ourselves in Murano, we were now surrounded by stereotypical Venice.  We walked for a bit through the tight alleyways, had some more gellato and saw some of the sights.  We hopped back on a water bus to go up and down the Grand Canal as the sun was setting.  Finally, we took the bus back over towards our hotel and found our pizzeria from the night before.  The waitress smiled at us as she was surprised to have the American tourists back two nights in a row.  Another litre of house wine (white this time) and we went to bed.

If you want to see all of our pictures, check them out here and here