Italy - Venice

This morning we took a water taxi to St Mark's Square, where we joined our local guide for a walking tour. There were many tourists so it was very crowded. The guide told us that we were lucky that the weather was good today, as it was raining the past few days which caused many shops to close due to flooding. As usual, the guide pointed out the various buildings and structures and gave us a brief history of each.












Later we went to a shop to see a Venetian Glass Blowing demonstration. The demonstrator took only a few minutes each to craft molten glass into various creations, and won the applause of the audience.




We then proceeded to take the gondola. Each gondola could only take a maximum of six people so our family got a gondola to ourselves as there were five of us. It was quite fun as we passed through areas where there were fewer tourists and it gave us a different view of Venice.






It was around noon when our gondola ride ended. We saw water seeping out of the drains in parts of the square. Soon most of the square was covered with water and it became rather inconvenient as there were many people but only a narrow pathway that was not wet yet. Some tourists just took off their shoes and walked across the water, which was almost ankle deep in certain parts.






We made our way to a restaurant for lunch before heading back to the meeting area to join up with the rest of our tour group at 2pm. We then took a water taxi back to where our bus was waiting and the bus drove us to Florence. On the way, we stopped at a restaurant for dinner. The ambience of the restaurant was rather good and there were a couple of people performing music to entertain us. However, I didn't quite like the appetizer as I felt it was too salty and tasted a bit weird. And luckily I chose salmon as my main course, as my mum and sisters who chose steak found that it was too tough. Overall, I felt that I would have preferred a better quality of food as compared to the restaurant having a nice ambience. After dinner, our bus drove us to our hotel and we rested for the night.