Date: December 30th, 2008
The Plan: See more of Venice, Drive to Rome and go to Bologna and Florence, which is on route to Rome
We woke up bright and early, packed our bags, put our bag in the car and checked out of the hotel. The hotel let us park our car till the afternoon (very kind of them). We got a 12 hour pass for unlimited trips in all public buses and public boats (Vaporetto) from the hotel front desk.
We booked our flight tickets on December 2nd and that day the news said that there was flooding in Venice. I was so heart broken then that I might not be able to go to Venice. But, this day was a nice and sunny day, a perfect day to spend in Venice. I was so glad that there was no sign of any rain.
Main bridge in Venice
We walked around Venice mainly, did not do much shopping, did a lot of window shopping.
Another Bridge
There are Gondolas all along the water that tourists could hire. It seemed kind of cold so we skipped the Gondola ride, but we did see some great Gondolas.
Gondola
Another Gondola
We decided to do a Gondola ride when we go to Vegas again. There were lot of shops around Venice, but I shocked to find a Bata Showroom. Bata is huge in India, but I didn’t know it was huge in Europe too. We saw Bata showrooms all over Europe, I didn’t know it was an European Company.
Bata Showroom
The other thing that shops there had was Venetian masks. They were so pretty, the work on these masks were so intricate.
Venetian Mask
More Masks
We walked around Venice, saw Rialto bridge again.
Riatlo Bridge
Rialto Bridge
Here are more pictures of Venice
Water Alley
Venice - I
Venice - II
St Mark's Square
We rode the boats mainly this day, as we had a long drive to Rome and did not want to tire ourselves out. The whole city is very well connected through boats. People boarded the boat from piers, and the boats stopped at other piers.
Boat Piers
Just like the previous day we found a small mom and pop restaurant and had our lunch, again very good. We were running way behind schedule, we were supposed to be out of the hotel on our way to Rome by 1.00 PM. Finally we got on our bus to the hotel and got out of the hotel around 3.00PM. The drive to Rome was almost 6 hours and we wanted to stop at Bologna and Florence. We were driving through Florence another day so we decided to skip Florence on this route. We did manage to drive into Bologna, another nice city. We did not do much there, just drove around the city.
Bologna City Center
Towers of Bologna
After a quick tour of Bologna, we decided to get back to our drive to Rome. It was still not warming up as much as I would have liked.
Temperature in Bologna
I was in Italy so I quit complaining and wrapped my scarf tightly and pulled my hat down to cover my ears. The sun had set by then, so the drive to Rome was dark, we wished we had some day lights as we were going windy roads and mountains.
In Rome, we got to our hotel and we were tired. We ordered room service and stayed in.
