Lido Venice

Yesterday we found something worse than Irish college students and cranky babies: Extended American Families on Vacation. Our flight from Prague to Venice was only an hour long but felt like 10 due to the fact that we were surrounded by this horrible American family, including a loud grandmother, a cranky grandfather, two adult children, their …

We arrived in Venice not a moment too soon after our big night out in Switzerland. Our room was great. Monday was rainy and not quite the Venice we had pictured. However, this meant the beaches werent crowded and we could get a lot done in one day. On Tuesday Italy striked so there was limited services all over Venice. Luckily, the tourist office …

We spent most of yesterday traveling from our monastic hotel in Assisi, to arrive last night our our "uber" modern Laguna Palace Hotel on the Venetian mainland. The interior of this hotel is designed to look like the inside of a cruise liner and they've done a pretty good job of it too. But, I am disappointed that our hotel is on the mainland of …

Monday, May 6th 2013

This morning, we left Florence. We made our way to Venice via the ever-so-dependable italian train system.

Our quest and adventure for the day was to find our apartment. The steps to accomplishing this were not all that simple:

• Once at the Santa Lucia train station in Venice, buy Vaporetto travel …

le mardi 7 mai 2013

Aujourd'hui, nous attendons une livraison spéciale: celle de Chantal accompagnée de sa mère Pierrette, sa soeur Mélanie et de Maxime, le cousin de Félix et de Sébastien. Quelle surprise pour les gars!

Avant leur arrivée, les trois gars avons passé la matinée à découvrir l'île du Lido. Nous nous sommes rendus au …

We went to the international film festival today in Lido, just outside Venice. This was fun as we walked around and saw a blue carpet. There were also paparazzi taking pictures and crowding around this gate to catch any glimpse of a movie star. So we joined in too, and soon after someone came by. Nick thought the crowd started yelling "yuckiii" and …

... of the city where we saw an opera. La Traviata is a classic Italian tragedy and is possibly the most famous opera in Venice if not all of Italy. The show was in a very small personal setting with a chamber Orchestra sitting just one row in front of us ...

Just as Paris was curiously symmetrical in their planning, Venice has more of a Byzantine influence than one would assume. Trading post, gateway to Europe, rulers of the sea and all that, but lots of tile work and pointy arches. We started today with ...

... and numerous items of top-end designer clothing. We spent the afternoon on Venice Beach… not California, but Venice’s beach, on the Island of Lido. This was a welcome escape from the oppressive heat of the city. We even enjoyed a swim in ...

... by wandering through the streets of Venice, making our way slowly but surely to the Bascilica San Marco. The walkways of Venice are narrow and unpredictable, without a map it is virtually impossible to know where you are. Canals appear at random and the ...

... fruit, meat and fish markets. We examined the live seafood and yet again ate more fresh fruit. We once more wandered around Venice and visited the Jewish Ghetto, which was tiny and allowed us to really appreciate the over-crowding that would have been ...

... ! Yaaay! On the downside, we finally figure out that we though Bethany, Kim's sister, was coming into Italy to stay the week with us in Venice that day, but in all actuality, she isn't coming until TOMORROW because of the time difference from ...

... displays of art work glass and jewelry. I bought some lovely pieces, necklace, earrings etc. back on a water taxi and into Venice for our included gondola rides. We had 5 boats and one had two musicians playing piano accordion and singing. There were 5 ...

... the main sections are all connected by footbridges so it is possible to walk from one side of Venice to the other - excluding some outlying islands like Lido, which has beaches facing the sea. Transportation is no problem, as the city is well ...

... to the station but we were determined to get to the piazza. As it would turn out…even though the quick walk through Venice was beautiful …we ran out of time and decided to catch the ferry back from San marco to the station…great idea ...

... short demonstration of glass-blowing as they have done it for centuries....quite something to see! What a strange but beautiful place Venice is. The architecture, the fact that no vehicular traffic exists other than on water, the canals everywhere, the ...