9/6 Venice to Florence
The next day was started with cake and then a water taxi trip to The Doge's Palace. This building is right next to the Campanile where we were the night before but the Palace was closed at that time. The Doge is a bit like the king, and he likes things nice. The Doge's "living room" is larger than 4 basketball courts. It has a ceiling of hand carved solid gold picture frames that wrap around life size paintings of historic events and their participants. The sheer scale and grandeur of going from room to room, each as staggeringly beautiful in size and scale than the next couldn't be put into words. The exploration of the Palace led into the prison, armory and the Doge's apartments. My mind couldn't wrap around how these rooms were built at this scale so long ago and I'm even in the construction industry!
Leaving the Doge's Palace it was time to depart Venice to go south to Florence. We had about an hour left in Venice but found out that our water taxi passes completed their 24 hour operation window and we were left with two dead tickets. The passes had expired just 15 minutes prior to attempt at leaving! The purchase of another 24 hour pass seemed unwise and the private water taxi man sensed our panic and said he'd take us to our hotel about 2 miles away, for a small fee of 80 euro. The only option was a near sprint across all of Venice. A hot weather day challenged us for a non-stop speed walk/run to catch our train, up and down so many bridges we just had to laugh about it. Getting lost in Venice is par for the course with many streets being dead ends and basically just flat out not making much sense. Progress is only via narrow unmarked alleys, and bridges up and over the canals that hide in plain sight. Smart heads and helpful GPS walking directions helped to eliminate some of the panic. There was a lot of (gelato) calories burned that afternoon heat. Another train, and next stop: Florence.
The train popped my passenger's ears as it created compression waves entering and exiting the tunnels of the Apennines. More train ride comfort with a highest speed segment just shy of 200mph. That's been the fastest we'd traveled since we'd been in Europe. The Florence station met us with a smack in the face to a level of chaos that hadn't yet been experienced in all the days prior. Perhaps just some irritable exhaustion, the GPSs recalibrated and we skipped the taxi line and made the walk to the hotel to unpack.
Simi utilized the repeat customer discount offered by the double decker bus ride and our first glimpses of Florence were atop the bus. Headphones gave a guided tour offering up the facts and history as things passed by. We departed the bus to take a moment at the scenic overlook where the mighty city was a landscape painting before us. Monumental churches poked out from the carpet of red clay roof tile houses. The bus to finished the city loop and we took an exit closer to downtown to find dinner and dessert. Even with taking it easy and the bus ride, we had one of our biggest step count days of the trip.
Comments
Post a Comment