The Pod Abroad: Friday 25 May Milan to Venice

Caught the 9am train from Milan to Venice, arriving around 11.30. Stepped out of the train station and into one of the most beautiful and unusual cities in this world.

We caught the bus from the train station to the stop nearest our hotel - in any other place that would just mean a bus, but here it is a waterbus, and a chocker one at that! We marvelled at the extraordinary architecture as we cruised down the Grand Canal, and at the plethora of big and small boats zipping skillfully along between and around each other. How cool is this!!

Found our hotel, tucked away in the Calle D’Ora, and then set out to explore. First stop was of course, the Piazza San Marco, with its fantastic architecture - the St Marks Basilica, the Doge’s Palace, and some other big and awesome buildings that we really don’t know anything about but they look amazing. We took the lift to the top of the St Marks bell tower for some spectacular views over Venice and the islands around the lagoon.

In the evening we met up with a tour guide to show us around some of the back streets of Venice, which was just great. She was a local, and she showed us the actual town of Venice, the quieter places where the locals live, the student quarter, and the interesting little places like the hole in the roof above Casanova’s mistresses front door, where she could check to see who was ringing the doorbell before she answered it, and the hole in the ground that Indiana Jones emerges from in the 3rd Indy movie. We finished the tour with a gondola ride, gliding through some of the quieter canals and under bridges before emerging onto the grand canal. Our gondolier was a bit of a hard case, and sang us a snatch of a song about how much he loved spaghetti. We did manage to genuinely upset him when Danae lurched from one side of the boat to another, making it tip a bit in what was obviously a very undesirable canal to fall into.