Venice. Day 2

After breakfast we headed out to explore more of Venice. Cameron and Alexander grabbed a piece of fruit from a market stall first, using their few words of Italian.

Next stop was a gondola ride. How could you visit Venice without a gondola ride??  With the day going to be over 35 degrees Celcius, an early gondola ride was in order. It was lovely, and once we were off the Grand Canal into the smaller canals, it was incredibly peaceful. Cameron spotted loads of crabs and fish in the canals.

Following the gondola ride, we ordered some fruit juice smoothies, and started a walk that would take us over the Rialto bridge and down to Zattere, where we planned to catch a ferry.

The walk demonstrated that once you were off the main streets, even in the peak of summer the backstreets are peaceful and quiet, and cool in the shade.

We loved how you could walk through narrow street and all of a sudden you were standing in the middle of a Piazza.

The boys loved this doorbell and letterbox set up!

Nicole was worried that if she lived here, the clothes pegs would not be strong enough and her knickers would end up in a passing by gondola!

We found a lovely little pizzeria for a slice of Pizza on the run. We reached the ferry dock with time to spare, and grabbed a cappuccino at the dockside (with the most hostile waitress I have ever met!) However, they had a toilet, which made it a great value cappuchino (saving 4 x 1.50 Euro in the process!).
We then had a ferry ride which took us around the islands including Murano, the glass blowing island. A nice rest for the feet, and a lovely way to get a different view of Venice.

After the ferry, we had a lovely walk through the backstreets again, ending up with a gelati for the kids.

We collected our bags and headed for the train station. With a late change of platform, and a quick race to the other end of the station, we boarded the Eurostar train to Florence. There we found our hotel and enjoyed some air conditioning and hot water for showers.