"Ahhh Venice..." in the words of Indiana Jones

Around the beginning of July I got the itch again and managed to convince my mom to meet me in Venice (ciao retirement account!). July 5 I flew up to Milan and jumped a train to Rapallo to meet up with La and Luca for a quick beach vacation. Let me tell you, quite a difference between those clear Sicilian waters and the cool dark blue muddiness of the Cinque Terre.

Crazy packed beach and cool old castle

The long weekend over, we drove back to Milan and the next day I left for Malpensa to grab my
mom from the airport. From there we took a train to Venice and a vaporetto (water bus) to our B&B. Of course after a long day of travel nothing seems to go well, we arrived to an empty “hotel” eventually I managed to t ahold of the guy who runs the place. He had decided to leave Venice and go buy a new refrigerator and wouldn’t be back for a number of hours. Have I mentioned yet how hot it was in Venice in July? Let me mention it now, HOT. I managed to get the code to get into the building out of the guy just as my phone died, thank god. After much cursing, debating, and general ranting we decided that the only thing to do was wait it out at the local bar around the corner. No I’m not talking about the European word bar as in coffee bar, I mean a BAR, a PUB, a JOINT, a place to buy and alcoholic beverage.  And so we walked our disgruntled selves the 50 feet to an outdoor table and ordered spritze, and sat there till the guy came back.

(this is my WTF face)

The next morning we left to explore the great hot city. I think the pix do a better job of showing what we saw (also I’m lazy) so here they are.

On the Grand Canal 

 

Later that evening we found our way to the Rialto Bridge and got some great shots of the heat lightning.

We then proceeded to get lost on the way home. Everyone says to go “get lost in Venice” trust me, they don’t mean do it at night. Eventually we arrived back, unscathed and mom still wearing her money belt, around 1am.

Our last morning we got the free water taxi to the glass factory which was really cool. We watched the workers (all men, lame, the trade can only be handed down from father to son) then we got a private tour of the factory and store.

The stuff is incredible. Around lunch time we made our way back to the train station to move on to Florence.