Venezia

En route to Nova Gorica for the IPT event, we had time for a couple of days in Venice! Always wanted to see Venice, the sort of place I'd heard loads about but never actually got the chance to go to myself.

The plan was to have a relaxing couple of days & have a stroll about the town. We've both been so busy these last few weeks that a couple of days set aside to do nothing was very welcome. We didn't organise much for this trip, only arranged to go about 2 weeks ago so most of the booking was done mid journey. Initially we figured we would hire a car from the airport, we'd looked it up online & figured it would be the most efficient & convenient thing to do. However, naive & lazy that we are, we should have finalised things online as the airport units for the very same car hire places were taking the absolute piss. Time to reassess - €3 express bus into town to sort a hotel & get some dinner.

We basically stopped at the first hotel we saw, about 100 yards from the bus station & checked in. Lovely hotel, quite old & traditional, but was pretty much what I was hoping for. Then out to dinner, which again was a walk & find mission. We randomly made our way through some very narrow streets & lanes eventually reaching what appeared to be a central square where we also found half of Venice eating, drinking & socialising. This was my first time in Italy & being a huge pizza fan I couldn't miss the opportunity to have a proper Italian pizza, which I have to say was really nice. Rob opted for the uh hum 'Chips Pizza' which was basically pizza with chips on top!

After dinner we had a nice walk along the canals (albeit in the dark) & then headed back to the room to investigate car hire further & also look into getting a hotel as near to Nova Gorica as possible. We already knew the Casino was fully booked, which was a shame, not often you get a Hotel in the Casino outside of Vegas.

Rob managed to find a decently priced hire car online from a place in Venice town & also took care of finding a hotel meaning we had the whole following day to explore Venice.

We spent the day strolling about the place, made a point of taking in the Grand Canal & a few other historical buildings etc. I wasn't even fussed on shopping, partly because there was nothing that caught my eye, but mainly because the walk was so pleasant. The weather was lovely, perhaps a lil warm for walking about in, but certainly no complaints to be warm in October.


Such a nice place, so different in so many ways & the people are really nice. Rob has informed me it's supposedly sinking which is a real pity, unless they find a fix it could be reduced to nothing.