Italy Day 8: Venice

We got up early to start our travelling today to Venice. It took three trains and about 6 hours or so to get there, but this day of travel seemed way more relaxed than the others. I think both of us have gotten used to the trains and train stations at this point.

On the last leg, we boarded a train in Bologna headed for Venice. We hopped in a car, and ended up sitting right next to the same Americans that we dined next to in Rome about 4 days earlier. Small world. There were six of them, and they were all super nice. Stephanie sat with the girls and chatted while I had beers with the guys. It was a very fun couple hours on this train into Venice, and it flew by.

We arrived in Venice in the afternoon and made our way via vaporetto, water bus, down the Grand Canal and to our hotel near the Rialto Bridge. Venice is beautiful. It is a little surreal with all the canals and streets intertwined.

We dined late at a fancy restaurant that was delicious. It was a fun and romantic dinner. We wandered around after dinner, stopping on the Rialto Bridge, looking in store fronts. We ended up walking into St. Mark's Square where orchestras were entertaining onlookers. Its all a pretty magical place.

We ended the night with a Gondola ride. It was after midnight and we crusied around in our private gondola for about an hour. Full moon was out and we had a bottle of prosecco in hand. We had a great time.