October 12-14

October 12 - This was a day that we hadn't initially planned, but our friends Andy and Kate said we would enjoy the ceramic/pottery town. We drove to the town of Nove, and enjoyed an afternoon of ceramic and pottery shopping. JD had done some research, and we started at the "best" shop, La Ceramica V.B.C. This proved to be true, and we found pottery stamped with American brands "Tiffany", "Lenox", and "Williams-Sonoma". They make pottery for these companies and apparently hold back some items. We chose a few pieces of "Tiffany" marked items and then discovered some mosaic pottery that we really liked. We picked up a few pieces of that as well. We went to several other ceramic stores, but La Ceramica was definitely the best. At the end of the afternoon, we enjoyed a delicious pizza at Pizzeria da Asporta. Who makes pizza with arugala sprinkled all over the top? This place, and it was amazingly good! Then, we drove towards Venice.

We made it to our hotel, The Crown Plaza (Thank you, travel points!) and enjoyed a fine but unremarkable hotel that was located about 20 minutes from Venice's Marco Polo airport.

Oct. 13- We checked out of the hotel and headed toward Venice, but not before hunting down a hardware store for some packing tape. The clerk at the hotel was a wonderful help, but we had to use Google translator to communicate what we needed. Once he figured it out, he gave us excellent directions to this hardware store and the lady working there was very helpful. Why did we need packing tape? Well, we had to do some slight rearranging of our pottery boxes to meet airline size requirements. Once we had the tape, we were on our way to Venice.

Suburban Venice is located on the mainland of the country. This is where the airport is, as well as our hotel for our last night in Italy. We stopped by this hotel, Titian Hotel, because they were gracious enough to let us store our extra luggage and boxes for the night that we stayed on the island-what you think of when you think of Venice. We dropped off our luggage and drove to the airport to say goodbye to our rental car. There's no driving in Venice, so we decided to leave the car behind. From there, we went into the airport to purchase our bus and vaporetti tickets. We caught the bus to take us to the vaporetti-boats that operate like buses on the canals in Venice. We purchased a pass that allowed unlimited rides for 36 hours. It was a pretty good deal considering one single ticket cost 6.50 euros. We hopped on a very crowded vaporetto and headed toward our hotel. We were able to get our first glimpses of Venice -large, beautiful buildings with flooded basements, large churches, many canals, bridges, and lots of tourists.

We walked to our hotel, The Westin Europa and Regina (Thanks, again, travel points!), just off of St. Mark's Square. The hotel was beautiful! We dropped our bag off but couldn't check in because it was too early, so we ventured out and bought tickets to the Correr's Museum and Doge's Palace. We were both pretty much done with art museums, so we breezed through the Correr and got some lunch. We then went to Doge's Palace. The doge was the Venetian ruler, but we read conflicting commentary about how much power he really had. One doge, for example, was executed for going against the will of the senate and council, so it would seem that he was just a rubber stamp for what the other ruling bodies wanted. Regardless, the palace was pretty spectacular-large, lots of art, gold and marble. Included in this tour was a tour of the old prison which was attached to the Doge's Palace.

Then we ran back to the Westin, checked in, and freshened up. One of the benefits of being so close to the action is that we were back in St Mark's Piazza in three minutes and the line into the Basilica was short so we went inside. We listened to a podcast guided audio tour and walked around enjoying the art. After leaving St Mark's, we hopped a vaporetto over to the Rialto Bridge where we got some pictures of the setting sun. From there we walked to a restaurant, Cantina Do Spade. Cantina Do Spade had rave online reviews for its price point, but it's a little difficult to find. The best explanation is to take the main drag (Ruga dei Orefici) north from Rialto Bridge until it intersects S. Giovanni and turn left. Take the second alley to the right and follow it back two blocks. The restaurant is just before the Do Spade bridge on the left.

We got back to the hotel around 930 and were both exhausted. Asleep by 10.

October 14 - The Westin wanted a ridiculous 45 euros per person for breakfast so we ventured out for a thoroughly Italian experience - breakfast at a Pasticceria. A blog had listed Pasticceria Tonola as one of the best and said it was just behind Chiesa di San Rocco. Unfortunately, only one of these things was true. We wandered around for 30 minutes before we started asking directions and found it. In JD directions (meaning good directions), walk from San Toma towards Frari church. Once you emerge into the square facing the church, walk around to the left and walk through the archway towards Accademia and go down that street. . When that street deadends, take a right and walk one block and the bakery is there. We got delicious pastries (JD got seconds) and delicious cappuccinos. It was also the cheapest breakfast we had and we were the only English speakers in the shop.

After breakfast, we went back to Frari and did another audio podcast. It was a beautiful church and relatively tourist free. From there, we wandered out to Canel Della Guidecca and caught a vaporetto over to Isla di San Giorggio where there is a bell tower providing wonderful views overlooking the city. Unfortunately, we arrived in the middle of the lunch break, so we enjoyed lunch and killed time at a nearby sandwich shop. When the bell tower reopened, we went up and took a bunch of pictures . We then grabbed some gelatto and spent the afternoon wandering through the city. When we were ready to leave, we caught a vaporetto back to the Westin, picked up our bag, and headed back to our airport hotel, the Titian.

To view photos of Venice, click on the photo below:

Venice photos