As I said in my last post, Tyler and I have been talking about doing some traveling. After his games on Sunday nights, he gets his schedule for the upcoming week. We always know that he is going to have Monday off, but occasionally he gets Tuesday morning off as well - which is what we need to happen in order to really be able to travel somewhere and not have to rush (even if it is only 24 hours). We found out he didn't have practice until 3pm on Tuesday so we decided we were finally going to take advantage of his time off. We first talked about going to Florence and Pisa. We quickly decided though that it would be too much to fit into one day. Venice has been at the top of my list of places to visit. Everyone here keeps telling us how beautiful it is and how we really need to go see it. So I said "Let's go to Venice!" and that's what we did!
We got up early Monday morning so we could catch the 8am train. Bless Tyler's heart, he was exhausted. He had an away game on Sunday, played all 40 minutes of the game and didn't get back until about 2am and still got up at 7am so that we could go. What a nice husband! We took a train up to Bologna and then switched to a high speed train that took us into Venice. That was my first time ever traveling by train. It was a cool experience and it only took about 2 and a half hours to get there.
The train station in Venice is located right on the Grand Canal. You walk out and you are just right there in the middle of everything. We started taking pictures right away like typical tourists. We both were in awe. I can't even explain how beautiful it was. Mind you, this was the coldest day yet since I've been in Italy, cloudy and dreary, and it was still unbelievable! I can't even imagine how breathtaking it is in the spring/summer! Everything is connected by a maze of bridges and boats everywhere in the canal. Tyler and I decided probably within the first hour that we were there that we would definitely be coming back in the spring to visit.
After taking our first initial pictures, we decided that we needed to get a hotel room because of course we were dragging around an overpacked bag I had for one night ;) After dropping off my stuff and freshening up, we walked around and saw all the shops and we went to lunch at a cool little pizzeria. We had some great pizza and some in-house brewed beer, which was actually really good!
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| Really thrilled that I am taking his picture :) |
I really wanted to ride on a gondola because of course that is what you think of when you think of Venice! We found a couple of guys who were giving gondola rides and I asked how much it would be. He told me for a 30-40 minute ride it would be 80 euros. ($110) I said "80 euros!??!?!!??!" Yeah right! I did not want to ride it that bad on a cold, bitter day for that much money. He then tried to tell me that since it was still daylight, he would bump it down to 60 euros. I said I would talk to my husband about it and we started walking away and he literally ran after us and told us "ok ok 50 euros!" Obviously we had the word "AMERICAN" plastered to our foreheads and he was trying to make suckers out of us being tourists. We told the guy we'd think about it and kept walking. Tyler told me if this was something that I really wanted to do, we could do it. I told him that I would take him up on his offer this spring. It was just way too cold and it will be much more enjoyable on a nicer day. (An Italian teammate of Tyler's told him today that if we would have been Italian it would have only been 15-20 euros. I'm not falling for that high price next time we are there!)
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| Can't wait for spring for a nice gondola ride! |
We enjoyed a nice, authentic Italian dinner and walked around some more at night. We really only saw a sliver of Venice and were only there for such a short time, but it was so nice for us to take this trip together. We were able to enjoy being with each other, be in a beautiful city, and Tyler was able step away from his job for a little bit. It was a perfect little getaway! Now we are familiar and know what to expect in Venice and I can't wait to visit again!
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| Enjoying Venice at night! |
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| A beautiful morning as we were leaving |
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