Venice- City of Love

There I was sitting in the Euro Star going to my next destination 2 and 1/2 hours away from Florence - Venice. Was traveling with mixed feelings - Excited since it is supposed to be a very romantic city and sad that this was our last destination for this splendid 9 days vacation.

So we finally checked into our hotel and the room had amazing decor; the best I have stayed in till date... every fixture had beautiful carvings and the whole room's colour combination was rustic red... After settling in we decided to venture out... Went to Piazza La Roma (the port) by bus and then took the water bus. It's amazing to see how they live their entire life in water. Travelling in water buses or water taxis, their mails and couriers coming in water boats. It's really splendid...

Some people say Venice has become very dirty and the water stinks... I never found anything like that even though I was there in their peak season, when supposedly it should be more dirty..
The place is beautiful... we saw the beautiful architecture of the place and shopped a little......ate a little.....

When the time was around sunset, we decided to take the gondola.. Now picture this....

We are going in the gondola... beautiful weather.. sun is about to set.. the guy rowing the boat is singing a lovely, probably a romantic Italian love song and....
Aananya decides to do potty :)
Since it was an hour's ride we seeked permission from the gondola guy to clean her in the gondola while he sang...
So here we were in the most romantic place, in the most romantic gondola... cleaning potty... :) Well that's life with kids ;) But no regrets whatsoever..
How many people can claim that they have cleaned their baby in a gondola in Venice?? And how many babies can claim that either???? :)

The next day we headed to all the small Islands near by, saw the glass factory at Murano and the exhibition... Liked a glass set.. cost of "each" glass was 28,000rs. put it right back from where I picked it, admired it and moved on ;)

I am so glad that I made the decision to go to Italy and have come back with beautiful memories that will stay on with me forever......

While on our flight back.. watched movies with a vengeance.. Saw Hanna Montana, Hangover and Luck by chance (back to back)... and then was home again...
However the next day was online again, busy preparing for my next holiday ;) We will just have to wait and see how that turns out ;)

Florence

Alright.. So we took this beautiful train journey to Florence passing through picturesque view of the country side of Italy.. We were in Florence within 1 and 1/2 hour of leaving Rome. Although I never felt like leaving Rome in the first place and wanted to stay there a little longer, I was equally anxious to see how our entire trip would turn out..

Usually Aakaash is the one who always selects hotels for us and his choice is 99.9% good, however this is for the 1st time we both were very apprehensive about our choice of accommodation since it was going to be our 1st experience staying in a hostel accommodation. These accommodations are usually taken by backpackers and is highly popular amongst youths... It is actually a hostel like set up with dorm, shared rooms, private rooms with shared or private baths etc for travelers... I thought it would be a crammed room with old or dirty walls and not a very clean bathroom..

To our utmost surprise the whole experience was new and wonderfully pleasant. First of all we were greeted at the reception by a very friendly staff. We had booked a private room with 3 beds and a private bath for us, so at the reception we were handed sheets and pillow covers for our room.. Holding the sheets felt odd and I was also dreading to go to the 3rd floor to find out what was waiting there for me.

As the lift opened to the 3rd floor, I was surprised to see beautiful red walls with complementing wall paintings and beautifully done up doors. There was a little relief for me but I was anxious to see what was behind the door... when I opened the door.....
Nothing could stop my beaming smile, for in-front of me was a small dresser with 3 cupboards, a very clean bathroom ( I choose my rooms based on clean bathrooms ;) ) and .........
a single bed, a double bed and on top of the double bed was a bunker bed and it wasn't one of those conjusted bunker beds where you pity the person who is below since there was enough space that Aan could easily stand without his head hitting the base of the bunker bed...

So very quickly I spread the sheets while giggling since it was kinda reminding me of my hostel days and the bunker bed was giving a feeling like we were traveling in a train... remember the way you have to stand and spread the sheets on the top berth of a train"). Aan was extremely thrilled that he staked claim to the top bed all to himself. However when the excitement of running up and down the bed was over, we decided it was time to leave the hotel, oops hostel, and head for some interesting site seeing...

We took the hop on hop off bus for the day and this bus had 2 routes.. So we quickly finished one tour and waited for the other and to our surprise this bus took us to another city called Fiesole. The scenery and location was so beautiful, it was a small hill station with tall bell and clock towers with fine architecture and nippy weather :)

After site seeing we reached our hotel at night and realized we were just too tired to go out for dinner and decided to have dinner in the hostel's cafeteria where we ordered Italiano and it was delicious.. while waiting for dinner, we played a few shots of pool and that made us remember our dating days and my college days...

Next day we went to Piza city which was an hours journey by train to see the Leaning Tower of Piza and then came back to Florence. From Piza City I wanted to go to Volterra ( where I believe New Moon ( movie) has been shot ). Purpose of visit to Volterra - Twilight Saga fan.. Anyway, due to the time crunch couldn't fulfill that wish.... although surprisingly Aakaash was ready to chase my madness along with the kids but it was cutting too fine and probability of getting stuck in know where was higher.. If I get a chance again I would probably do it sometime in the future..
As I said Italy is a place where you can go again and again.. It has so much to offer and so much of history and beauty that you are bound to go back ..