Italy Trip 2004
(Sept 21st - Oct 3rd)
WEDNESDAY SEPTEMBER 29, 2004
I woke up at 6:45am and Adam was still asleep. I decided to go for a little walk around the immediate area.
I think I was one of the only tourists on the street. Instead of tourists, the streets were filled with locals heading to work. Some getting ready to open their shops, others heading for the water taxis.
All the bakeries had their doors and windows open while baking fresh bread and pastries. I couldn't resist the smell and bought these terrific apple filled pastries for breakfast.
One Adam was ready, we headed for the water taxi. We passed by the Rialto bridge and I took a few pictures along the way.
We discovered water taxi tickets were unavailable for purchase at the stop we chose, so we moved to another. For 10.50 Euro, you get a 24 hour pass for all the water taxi routes. We purchased the pass and headed to St. Giorgio Maggiore.
Once arriving at the church, we were greeted with a nice view of San Marco Square from across the water.
We went inside the church to look around.
Once inside, we discovered we could take an elevator to the top of the church for a great view of Venice.
We headed back to the main island and walked around some more.
For our next destination, we needed to catch a taxi on the other side of the island. On the way to the taxi, we passed through San Marco Square. They were filming a movie at the back section. I saw Jeremy Irons getting in to costume.
I thought I also saw Heath Ledger, but I second guessed myself thinking he looked too small. Well, it turns out it was him. Not that I care though. I'm much more interested in Jeremy Irons.
We stayed around the square for a little while.
The square was full of pigeons. Feeding the pigeons is a main attraction at the square during the day. Adam decided to feed them and then talked me in to doing the same.
Here are two videos from Adam's camera.
It was hilarious, as we both had birds all over us. Surprisingly, after being with the pigeons for well over half an hour, neither of us were hit with any bird droppings.
We continued to the north end of the island to catch the taxi to Murano. Murano is where all the Venitian glass is made. We walked around a bit, looking at all the stores and watching some glass items being made. We then headed back to the island.
Adam decided to take a rest at the hostel, so I went for a walk. Aside from food and glass, Venice is also full of shops selling masks. For those familiar with Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut, you know the type of masks I'm talking about. They are just so cool. I think I'll buy one before we leave.
I returned to the hostel and we headed out for a quick browse of the local shops. Since we started at 7pm, we only had an hour before most stores would close.
After window shopping, we grabbed some dinner. I had ravioli with cheese in spinach sauce and roast chicken.
When we met Sheldon and Rebecca in Rome, they told us we needed to try a sweet spritz . It was apparently important to get it sweet, as the regular version is bland. So after dinner, we stopped at a local bar for some gelato and a spritz.
The bartender didn't speak English, so Adam tried to order in Italian using the English to Italian phrase book. He successfully asked for a spritz, but had to look up the word for sweet. He found the translation and had the bartender read directly from the book instead of trying to pronounce the word. The bartender gave us a very odd look and seemed quite confused. Adam gave me the book and showed me the word he pointed out to the bartender. It turned out he pointed to the word 'sweat' instead of 'sweet'. The confusion was quickly cleared up and the three of us had a good laugh.
We returned to our room slightly buzzed from the drink and prepared for the last phase of our trip ... Florence.
