Wow, it's been awhile since I last posted. The months of August and September were filled with camping adventures and a trip to Italy. This post is about the trip to Italy.
When we looking for an itinerary that would take us to a number of different cities, we found that many companies tried to cram in as much as possible on their tours, how do you visit 13 cities in 11 days. Or you couldn't modify the trip. We found an Air Canada vacation itinerary that we liked but you couldn't even extend, the hotel bookings with linked with the vacation package flights. Our travel agent recommended a company called Railbookers. We were able to set our own itinerary by deciding how many nights we wanted to stay in each location. We wanted to go to Venice, Florence, Naples and Rome.
When Railbookers came back to us; the first quote it seemed quite high, they had tours or excursions scheduled every day and the hotels they had booked were all four star. We indicated that good three star hotels would be fine with us and that there were tours we didn't want to do. The next quote was much better, the hotels were still four star but we had free days in each location to do as we pleased. Railbookers also booked the train tickets (all first class) and transfers from the arrival airport to the first hotel and from the last hotel to the departure airport. We cancelled the the departure transfer as we would be in Rome with the hotel only a block or so away from Termini train station where we could catch the Leonardo Express train.
Our first destination in Italy was to Venice. The private transfer was by water taxi and there was a representative in the arrivals area to meet us to escort us to the dock area. Unfortunately, it was raining on our arrival but at the speed the water taxi goes you'd likely get wet anyway. Our hotel had a private dock at the back of the hotel so our private transfer took us right to that dock. No lugging wheelie bags very far, all we had to do was go around to the front of the hotel. Our first hotel was the Santa Marina. It was well situated being quite near the Rialto Bridge. It had a nice lounge and bar with a covered patio area. At first glance, our room seemed rather tired but I think it was just that the furniture, although quaint, was dated.. The bathroom seemed to have been recently renovated. Our room had a nice view, looking out over the front courtyard.
We had an an excursion the next day booked so after settling into our hotel we set off to find the meeting place. The excursion was a walking tour of Venice with entrance into the Doge's Palace and the Golden Basilica. The following day was our free day, we went to see a music museum, a gondola workshop, eat cicchetti and used the water bus to go over to San Giorgio Island where we saw a Murano glass exhibit and went up the bell tower for some wonderful views of Venice.
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| Cicchetti |
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| Golden Basilica |
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| Rialto Bridge |
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| Bridge of Sighs |
The next day we would have to get to the train station, having ridden the water bus the day before, we knew where to catch the bus to the train station. We left for the train station early as we didn't know how long it would take us to walk to the dock or how often the water busses ran. We ended up being at the station quite early and had to wait awhile for our train. The trains had reserved seating, your ticket gives you the car number and the number of your assigned seat. We had first class tickets, meaning wider seats, wifi and a free snack and drink was provided. It was an easy trip to Florence. As you can see from the pictures, we ended up having good weather in Venice and we would be quite lucky with weather for the rest of our trip as well.
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| View from the train station |
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| Rockett on the train |
I'll pick up with our stay in Florence on my next post.
