John’s Blog-o-Rama

The honeymoon videos Chu and I took in Italy have all been edited and uploaded, and can be viewed here.

Wednesday, May 3, 2006

So we got on the Eurostar heading for Venice, but had a little trouble finding our seats. We were supposed to be in First Class, but couldn’t quite figure out where that was. We got on a car and tried to sit down, but there were people in our seats. As it turned out, we were on the completely opposite end of the train from where we were supposed to be, so we were a little embarassed, but at least we knew where to go after that.

As we got to our seats, I grabbed our bags to put them up in the luggage rack above the seats. As I did that, I saw someone out of the corner of my eye sitting in front of us that looked familiar, so I looked at him once, looked back, and then looked again. Turns out it was actor James Spader on vacation in Italy, which was certainly a surpise. Didn’t end up talking to him, but heard some of his conversation with people sitting next to him, and he sounded like a pretty personable guy. He was also taller and a little heavier than I thought he would be. Other than that, the rest of the 2-hour trip went smoothly and was uneventful, and we finally arrived in Venice in the late afternoon.

After arriving in Venice, we headed straight over to our hotel, the Hotel Ai Mori d’Oriente, which was in the Cannaregio district in Venice. The hotel was fairly nice and in a relatively uncrowded areas of the city (mainly because it fair distance from the main sights). We unloaded our bags and freshened up, and headed out to explore the city.

We wanted to get an evening view of the main sights, so we took a nice walk down through Cannaregio down to the San Marco district, which took us to the Piazza San Marco. After exploring that area some (and watching the birds chase Chu around), we continued exploring the San Marco area and the shopping areas. Then we headed over to the Grand Canal and the Rialto Bridge for some sightseeing, crossed the bridge over the canal, and then explored all through the San Polo district. We were pretty beat by this time (probably walked several miles), so we headed back to the hotel for the evening.

Thursday, May 4, 2006

We planned Thursday to be our in-depth viewing day of the sights, which included Frari Church, the Correr Museum, St. Mark’s Basilica, the Ducal’s Palace, and the Dorsoduro district. We woke up a little late (11AM), got a quick lunch, and then headed over to the Frari Church.

The Frari Church is an old Franciscan church in the San Polo district containing the works of many artists from the Renaissance. We spent over an hour touring the church, viewing the art and sculpture that adorns the walls and ceilings. Next, we headed over to the Correr Museum in Piazza San Marco, which houses art and artifacts from Venice’s history. Here we were able to get a good idea about the rise and splendor of Venice from around the 14th-19th centuries.

Next up was St. Mark’s Basilica, which is at the opposite end of Piazza San Marco from the Correr Museum. This cathedral had a number of old mosaics and artwork, but overall wasn’t particularly impressive to us. We then headed next door to the Ducal’s Palace, which was the historical home to the rulers of Venice. It also contains a meeting room for the Venetian senate, an armory, the huge Hall of the Grand Council, and a prison (which is connected to the palace by the famous Bridge of Sighs). After the Piazza San Marco itself, the Palace was truly our favorite sight in Venice.

We decided to spend the rest of the day walking around and exploring, so we headed over to the Dorsoduro district to have a look. We walked down past the Gallerie Dell’Accademia and walked along the Giudecca Canal for while. The sun was out and the sky was clear, which made walking along this canal extremely enjoyable. We then spent the rest of the day just walking wherever the streets and alleys took us, had dinner in the Campo Santa Margherita, and then headed back through the San Polo district to our hotel.

Friday, May 5, 2006

By now, we had had enough of Venice and were ready to move on. Luckily our plan was to leave early in the AM on the Eurostar to Florence). We got up early, ate our complimentary hotel continental breakfast with room-temperature milk (why don’t Italians like cold milk?), and headed out to the train station to catch our train.

Next up: Part 3 - Florence

Links: Venice Map, Italy Map, Venice Pictures, Venice Videos

The honeymoon started in the afternoon of May 1, as we left on American Airlines from Austin-Bergstrom International. Our flight itinerary was to connect in Dallas, then through London Gatwick, and into Bologna. Why Bologna? Chu and I used our frequent flyer miles to purchase the tickets for free (more or less), and flying into Bologna was the only destination that had open frequent-flyer seats. Obviously not our first choice, but at least it got us into the country cheaply.

All of the flights were exactly on-time, so we arrived in Bologna at 6 PM on May 2 and went straight to the hotel. When booking hotel rooms, my main goals were to a) get a hotel not too far from the train stations, and b) to try to stay somewhat near to the action in each city. Unfortunately, somehow I managed to do neither in Bologa. The hotel (a Holiday Inn) ended up being outside the city, some 15-20 minutes by taxi from the train station. Not sure how I managed that, but we were stuck with it.

The next day we were heading off to Venice, so we got a good, long night’s sleep, and then headed over to the train station early in the afternoon of May 3. We wanted to get to Venice quickly since we were getting a late start, so we purchased some first-class reservations for the Eurostar, grabbed some McDonald’s for lunch (they were everywhere), and got on the train to Venice.

Links: Video From Bologna, Italy map, Bologna Map

Since Chu and I returned from our honeymoon 3 weeks ago, I’ve wanted to post a recap of our honeymoon adventures here on the blog. I think I have now sufficiently motivated myself to get it going, so over the course of this week I’ll be posting entries of some of our experiences from traveling throughout Italy for 12 days. I have already posted the pictures from our trip in a previous post, so please review them again to get a sense of what we saw as I tell our tale.