Day 26- Gondola

I didn’t sleep that good, but I know Jewel did, the snoring confirmed it. I was a little restless, but excited about the day. So we go down for our breakfast at the hotel, they gave us some pastries, had some wonderful yogurt and hot chocolate. Now we are on the hunt to find a gondola. Yesterday, we met a man named Lucca whose gondola is actually in the movie The Italian Job! Gonna be looking for him in the movie when I get home. So he’s a local celebrity. So we find a gondola and they said it would be ∍150 to take us to the Guggenheim museum. So we keep walking, some how we ended back where we found Lucca yesterday, there was a different guy and he said it would give us a 40 minute tour for ∍80, which was a lot better.

Getting into the boat was slightly tricky, it’s rocking back and forth, the weight is uneven, you feel like its going to tip over. Now we are moving, the water is so calm and peaceful, its puts you into a zone. Then we hit the Canal Grande, which is like the main highway and there we see all the other boats. So many people where taking our pictures of us, as if we where celebrities. So we saw the casino, a couple of the museums and churches on the ride. It was so beautiful. There where some alleys that where very narrow, but the way they maneuver the gondolas is incredible.

The rest of the day we shopped and didn’t make it to the Guggenheim museum, which I did want to see. There is just so much of Venezia to see and takes so long to walk through. There was a section of Venezia we never made it too. There was area that reminded me of 5th Ave. in New York, all the stores Gucci, Prada, Dior and so on. We did see the Basillca of San Marco. It was right off the water, there where lots of cruise ships, the sun was shinning bright, it was magnificent.

Since the sales where going on I was looking for a really great pair of shoes, but I really been seen anything that I gotta have or worth he money. I did get a pair of gloves as recommended by my friend Sonya. They are brown leather with tan stitching and cashmere lining, will have to see how warm they are in the winter. So we make back just in time to go tot the hotel to pick up our bags and get on the train. We get to our first stop in Bologna, grab some dinner, then the train is late and switches tracks. So once again we are running around the train station.

Then we get to Prato and missed our next connection train. There is a huge train strike tomorrow, but it starts the night before at 9pm. So we had planned to be back in Lucca before 8:30pm, however, with all the delays it’s already 8:30pm. So there is a train finally on the board for Lucca, which is an hour away from Prato. So now its running late, I’m looking at the board trains are getting canceled left and right. All I can do is sit and wait and hope. It finally shows up and it’s the last train pretty much going out of the station. So glad we made it home. The trains in Italia…not so reliable, but I guess fairly priced!