When we woke up this morning Jamie and I realized that we had around 15 minutes until the bus was leaving! I guess the "trauma" that we put ourselves through the previous evening had caught up with us! It was to be a fairly early departure this morning as we were heading to the olympic ski jumps on our way out of town. As the photos show, the only two who were in worse shape than Jamie and I were Molly and Katy! You'll note in the photos on the previous page how happy they look!
After spending some time at the Ski Jumps we re-boarded the coach and headed for Venice. This journey took us past the Stubai Glacier (Yes, you can ski there in July, and NO, unfortunately I did not have time to do it!) and through the Brenner Pass to Italy. I was amazed at how different the Italian Alps (Dolomites) are from the Austrian and Swiss Alps. The Dolomites are much more Jagged and pointed. Needless to say, the views were outstanding.
We arrived in the outskirts of Venice in the late morning and were greeted with the biggest traffic jam that I have ever seen. It seemed that we sat in this traffic for hours. Fortunately, Tim "bribed" Daren to play some "appropriate" music to get us in the mood for Italia! The most memorable song was "That's Amore!" because virtually everyone on the bus was singing!
We made our way through the traffic and over a long bridge to the boat docks where Dave was going to park the coach. We then boarded a "Vaporetti" like boat that took us from the mainland to the heart of Venice and St. Mark's Square. We were given our standard orientation and then told the best way to see Venice was to wander the back streets and just "get lost"! Needless to say, we were very hungry and I could not wait to get my first taste of authentic Italian food!
We spent a few minutes at the Glass Blowing Demonstration before I realized that although this was facinating, the finished products were very expensive. The next scheduled event was a lace making demonstration, and I opted out of this one! we wandered the back streets of Venice and found a great pizzaria for lunch. I had been told prior to my trip by many people that the best thing in Italy is the Gelotti. Of course I needed to confirm this and although I won't go as far as saying it was the "best" thing, it certainly ranked up there! Gelotti is definitely the best Ice Cream that I have ever had!
We spent most of the day wandering the streets of Venice. Jamie found a toy shop that sold highly detailed collecable model cars and finally bought that Ferrari that he had been fancying! Quite simply the best purchase in Venice was the "Jester" hat that Jamie, Tony, Kiwi and I bought from a street vender. Kiwi decided that we would use the hat as a "punishment" for those who were late for the bus! It seems that a certain contingent of people were ALWAYS late for the bus, and Dave and Daren were too nice to leave their sorry butts behind (too much paperwork, I guess!). Anyway, this hat was to be worn by the last person to be late for a deadline. They would then have to wear the hat until the next person was late. Needless to say, we expected that noone would be late anymore! We could not have been more wrong! Check out the hat on Kiwi's head in the back row, 4th from the left in the group photo HERE.
We spent the entire day in Venice including a nice dinner on the Grand Canal and a gondola ride. The godola driver that we had was a very strange fellow indeed. he did not speak english and made strange noises throughout our ride. He would also break into a strange song at the top of his lungs every so often! All told, Venice looks mighty different from the front of a gondola than from the streets.
We learned that we were visiting Venice on the holiday celebrating the end of the plague (I wish I could remember the name of the holiday!) There were many boatloads of people all congregating in the main harbor for what looked like a huge party. Daren told us that there was fireworks after dark but we would be at our hotel in the suburbs by then. We did enjoy the "pre-game" activities though. At one point Jamie and I just sat on the banks of the harbor and watched in amazement as more and more boats came into the harbor and moored up to one another. Quite a site!
When we arrived at our hotel we were pleasantly surprised. This was a new place for Contiki and Daren and Dave had never been here before. Jamie and I had a really nice room (with an extra bed) and the nicest bathroom that we had all trip. Too bad we were there for about 10 hours before we were on the coach again and off to Roma!
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| The Bridge of Sighs and the ever present gondolas! |
  View from a gondola!
| Rialto Bridge over the Grand Canal.
|   The Grand Canal from Rialto Bridge.
| Venitians celebrating on the canals!
|   Dinner on the Grand Canal. |
There are gondolas everywhere!
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© 1998-2000 Geoffrey S. Cable
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