Winterland Wanderings: Day 23: Rome to Venice, 2nd January

Day 23: Rome to Venice January 2^nd

This is likely to be a short blog as there hasn’t been a great deal happen today.

We left Rome at 7:30 am, ready for the 500km drive to Venice. All day we drove through heavy fog then fog/smog. Around the middle of the morning we gained an impression of the beauty of Tuscany and then later of the alps region, but it certainly wasn’t clear enough for photos.

Our guide, Victor, drove both Roger and me absolutely crazy with doing nothing but talking at us all morning. He had to sell us the extra optional tours and boy did he labout the job!!! Why say in one sentence what you can spread out to half an hour??? He goes on and on in such a patronising tone. I most certainly know how my students feel now – and in fact, Victor’s style may well have a lasting affect on my teaching style. By the lunch break, we decided that we had better take it in turns, one to listen and the other to have a break by listening to music on the MP3 player.

We arrived at Venice by 4pm and went straight to the pre-arranged gondola ride, which we really enjoyed. Victor then led us to St Mark’s Square, which we will see in more detail tomorrow. He let us loose for two hours and we had a lovely time, just wandering the streets by ourselves. Most of the shops were open until 7pm, still with their Christmas wares, so the atmosphere was lovely. The crowds of course, were crushing.

At 7pm the group met again and we had a water taxi ride down the Grand Canal. That was lovely too, with some of the buildings lit up.

We then drove to our very flash hotel, have just enjoyed a very nice dinner and I will happily fall into bed as soon as I have posted this. Victor has been very informative with a potted history of Venice. I will write this up in tomorrow’s blog.