Our flight took off at 6.30 am, and it's over an hour drive from here, and we had to take the car to the Carhotel first, so we had to leave at 3am...meaning, no sleep at all. Well, I dozed off for about an hour but that's it.
We drove to the airport in the pouring rain. Absolute agony. couldn't drive over 80 km/h. Hardly any sight at all. needless to say, that in combination with not having slept, made me feel nauseous beyond belief when we arrived at last.
Had some kip on the plane, which made me feel slightly better.
All went very smoothly, and once arrived in Venice, we bought our travel cards for the boats and headed to the hotel. And it was raining. yes. hmm.
Stopped at Giardini and headed to Hotel Conte Contarina where we met the odd concierge. Kept on sighing and staring at his papers. Told us to come back in an hour when the room was available. So, we went for a bite to eat in the Via Giuseppe Garibaldi, which is just around the corner. Had some pizza with mushrooms and wine (at 11am, but hey, by then we were up for 24 hours straight) and then returned to the hotel. The location of the hotel is quite ideal. Very close to the Biennale site, in a street with lots of restaurants and bars, and lots of locals and very close to San Marco.
There was some problem with the hotel room, which would prove to be an ongoing thing (we did get the right room in the end on the second night, which was much better than the first room).
After all that, we headed into town towards San Marco, passing San Zaccaria, Ponte dei Sospiri, etc. We then just strolled in the area between San Marco and Rialto, crossing the bridge, exploring San Polo, stopping for a glass of wine there. it was blistering hot. The rain had stopped when we left the hotel and now it was sweaty and very hot. In the late afternoon, we ended our walk at Accademia where we took the boat back to the hotel.
While we were changing clothes, an immense storm started, everything went dark, shutters were banging against the windows, thunder and lightening... really quite impressive stuff!
And it cooled off a lot!
We went to have dinner in a lovely restaurant close to the hotel, La Nuova Perla, where we had spaghetti carbonara, a meat dish and lemon ice cream with vodka. It was good but not brilliant. We had much better the days after. ;-)
After that, we headed back to the hotel and finally, after 36 hours straight, we could sleep....
(I will put a selection of my pictures on my flickr account)
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