Last morning in Florence – our train didn’t leave until 11.40 so we had time to duck over and see something near our hotel which Alice had wanted to fit in; the Spedale Delli Innocenti. This is actually an orphanage (or it was until 1875), one interesting feature of which is that it had a rotating stone allowing parents to leave their child on one side and ring a bell or something, thus abandoning their children anonymously.
So we had a bit of a look around there and read the signs about the history of the orphanage, took photos of the fountain and so on, then grabbed our bags from the hotel, and got on the train.
My advice when coming to Venice – bring a map.
The less said about our attempt to find the hotel, about my notion that getting lost would be fun, about the coming around a corner expecting to find the way forward and only finding another dead end, and about the amazing similarity of any one Venetian ‘street’ to another, the better.
Actually the hotel found us, really. We called for directions and the proprietor (Andrea) told us just to go back to the main bridge, where we waited at the Vodafone store and he came and got us!
The room itself is pretty stylish; it has three sets of shutters and if you open them all and sit on one of the armchairs it’s a good place to be.
My other advice when coming to Venice – bring your food with you. We have a running joke going of cities having a machine at the airport to turn tourists upside down and shake their pockets out; in Venice they have one of these but they call it a restaurant. Anyway it’s not a question of what the food ‘should’ cost but whether it fits within the budget, and it just about does. we had grapes and nuts and hotel food left over in our bags anyway, and you don’t use that much energy sitting on the train (it’s about a two and a half hour ride from Florence to Venice), so when we got here we really only needed dinner.
Piazza San Marco must be the only open space in Venice; walking around there would be amazing anyway, but walking from one narrow back street after another out into a wide square really heightens the effect. OK, the square is clustered with multiple swirling archipelagos of rubbish, and smells mainly like pigeon crap. But make no mistake, it is beautiful.
What is even more beautiful is the Rialto (the bridge over the Grand Canal) at night, and the Grand Canal itself. We still can’t quite believe we’re in the real actual Venice, not some Venice theme park or VeniceLand.
Yes. Actual Venice.
Greg
