honeymoon: venice

Ahh, Venice. After an overnight train ride (remarkably comfortable, at least for me -- according to Andy, it helps to be short in those bunks) we arrived in Venice in the morning and walked out of the train station into the Mediterranean heat. After finding our hotel, we went straight to the beach (much to the dismay of our snooty hotel owner, who felt we should be seeking out the culture of Venice; I'm not so sure about that -- from what I could tell, the main culture of Venice involves supporting the tourist industry, but maybe I'm being a little harsh). Swimming in the Adriatic Sea was just enough culture for me!

We wandered around Venice once the hottest part of the day had passed, trying the gelati, checking out the Piazza San Marco and looking at the canals before having dinner in a little courtyard. We had fresh antipasto with traditional Italian pasta accompanied by, of course, wine. (England is for beer, France is for wine, and Italy is for wine too.) We finished off the evening with the obligatory gondola ride: wildly overpriced but I think there's a law that says if you go to Venice on your honeymoon and don't go on a gondola ride then they shoot you as you leave the country -- and rightfully so. The gondola was as romantic as can be and one of the most peaceful moments of the entire trip.

The next day we went to Murano, the glass-making district of Venice. There are about a million little glass factories where they herd you in, demonstrate the making of some kind of glass ornament (which is pretty neat) and then usher you into the gift shop where you can buy ornaments just like the ones the fellow just made, going from sand to little glass horse in about three minutes -- for about sixty bucks. I'm not kidding.

We wandered around Murano, looking in all the hundreds of gift shops which all sold essentially the same stuff until we finally found a place which was a lot more reasonably priced and bought a few little items, knowing full well that they might very well not make it all the way back to Canada intact. (They did, thanks to the extremely secure wrapping job by the shop owner.) We headed back to the beach (it was still hot!) and had pizza margheurita, beer and gelati (okay, Italy is for wine in the evenings) for our late lunch before heading back to our hotel where we luxuriated in the A/C for a while before dinner.

The next day we were up early and off to Rome!