Day 27 - San Marino to Venice

We awoke to a chilly morning with a heavy mist covering San Marino, a separate state within Italy, where we had spent the night. Thankfully it was a later start today and we met Patricia at 9am for a walk through the ancient city fortress…and what a walk it was! We walked up a number of steep cobble stoned streets, many steps and then found ourselves seemingly at the top of the world with wonderful views of the villages and fields below us as well as the towers of the fortress. It was well worth the climb and certainly got the blood flowing early in the morning even though it was a mere 5°C.

 

 

 

We then spent a leisurely hour wandering the streets looking at the shops that included a wine shop with pornographic wine labels and bottles (!) and a café where Carly had a hot chocolate from their selection of over 40 flavours.

 

It was then back on the bus where we travelled to Venice, or the “Venice area” where our hotel is located. We had an hour or so to kill before we headed off into Venice so I did a bit of washing and Carly found the first English speaking TV shows for ages so we got to watch old episodes of The Gilmore Girls and Ghost Whisperer!

 

We were back on the bus by 6pm to travel to the “parking island” where we met a boat that took us into Venice. It was really pretty at night with the lights reflecting beautifully off the water of the lagoon and canals. We wandered through the small streets and laneways, across tiny bridges, past exotic looking shops and eventually arrived at our restaurant where we settled in for the obligatory four course meal. We later went for a longer walk, wending our way in an incomprehensible maze-like pattern to a finally arrive at a weird looking spiral type building. Patricia had been talking to us in our “whispers”, the audio receivers we all wear on these guided talks, and was just about to tell us what the building was when my battery ran out. By the time I had replaced it with a spare I was just in time to hear her say: “So that’s why it is like that. Let’s move on”. Needless to say I am none the wiser…but it is quite an interesting building.

 

After our walk we were back to the boat by about 9.45pm and back at the hotel by about 10.20pm – looking forward to seeing Venice in the daylight tomorrow.