After a full day of sightseeing at the Vatican we wanted a day to sleep in, relax, and not have anything we had to see. I picked up these pastries for breakfast from a place near our hotel.
I don’t think we even left our hotel until 3:00pm this day. We walked around, picked up a few gifts for people, and then decided to head towards the Spanish Steps. We got there right as the sun was setting and it was beautiful. Our first night in Rome when we got lost walking around, we actually walked down the stairs not even realizing it was The Spanish Steps.
The next morning we got up early and headed to the train station to catch the train to Venice. This was our view from the train heading into the station.
Venice was a beautiful city. There is something about a city completely on water with no cars, buses, or taxis. The buildings were bright and colorful and the city was actually bigger than I thought it would be.
A trip to Venice isn’t complete without taking a gondola ride! There were lots of gondola stations all along the main canal.
We chose to do a single person gondola sine we wanted to be able to enjoy it just the two of us. I will warn you gondola rides are not cheap. Our “driver” was telling us there are different price levels depending on what company you go with and what you want. Single riders are more expensive than riding with a lot of people. Singing “drivers” are more expensive than ones that don’t. You can also chose to do the short or long route. We choose to do the long route and it was 200 euros. Yes, that is a lot for a 40 minute boat ride, but you’re only in Venice once for your honeymoon. Our wedding guests and family were very generous with their gifts and we knew we wanted to spend some of that money on experiences instead of things. We took in every minute of the ride and I was so thankful this is something we were able to do. Of course the one picture our guy took was blurry.
We ate lunch by the water and the food was less than stellar. If I had to do it again I would pick a place away from all the tourists where the food tends to be more authentic and delicious.
After the gondola and lunch we walked around and managed to walk all the way to the end of the island.
This also means we of course got lost on our way back. One down side of Venice is all the canals and walkways. We would go down a street only to find out it ended at the water and have to back track. It was also incredibly hot and humid inside all the little alley ways.
The train we were taking back to Rome was also the last train of the day which meant if we missed it we were stuck on the island overnight. I may have started crying at one point when we got to another dead end after walking for almost an hour. In the end, J managed to navigate us back to the train station and we caught our train on time.
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