As someone aptly said, “Life is a journey” and here our journey
in Europe continues with an amazing and wonderful trip to the floating city of
dreams known in the world by name Venice (Venezia). The lagoon city has
everything into it from 118 small islands to surrounding beaches and colorful
islands like Burano. One of passion I have in life is to drive and thrive
myself into nature’s beauty. Hence, we decided to make a road trip from Zurich
to Venice via Milan. The journey from Zurich to Milano via San Bernadino gave
us breathtaking views of real Swiss beauty while passing through alps and
valleys. This route also saved us a lot of time by avoiding San Gotthard
tunnel. We reached Milan after a journey of close to 5 hours including breaks
to capture the beautiful pictures. We stayed at economy hotel for 1 night and
continued our journey to Venice next morning. It took close to 3 hours to reach
Venice. We parked our cars at one of the available parkings and directly took
ACTV pass (for vaporetto also known as water bus) for 48 hours. The fun galored
as we boarded the vaporetto that gave us the first sight to the beauty heard of
and watched in movies long ago.
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Bridge at Arsenale
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| Small bridges connecting two of the 118 small islands.. |
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We checked in to our king sized 1500 sq ft
apartment close to San Marco square, a place where any visitor during his visit
would come once here. Our sight seen though began with Rialto Bridge through
Grand Canal; this bridge is one of the oldest and one of the main tourist points
in Venice. This connects San Polo and San Mark square. We then walked down
through alleys to find ourself lost in Venice and finally reached San Marco
square.
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Beautiful painting on the building , captured on our way to
Rialto Bridge through Grande Canal...
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| Rialto Bridge... |
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The huddle of pigeons reminded us of the song from famous bollywood
movie ‘Bachna Ae Haseeno’. Our day 1 ended with a blissful stroll from San
Marco square to Arsenale followed by self cooked dinner at our apartment.
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Heart of the island... San Marco square..
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The
next day morning began with visit to Basilica San Marco, a main cathedral in
Venice adjacent to Doge’s palace. The basilica San Marco provided us a sense of
Venetian’s art and history. The beautiful carved ceilings and paintings on the
wall make it adorable and eye-catching. It took more than 1 hr for us to
completely see the church before we moved to elgant Doge’s palace, another beautiful
place with lot of history, paintings and beautifully carved ceilings.
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Beautifully carved ceiling...
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In the
afternoon, we took a vaporetto to visit Burano, famous for colorful houses and
then to Torcello island known to be older than Venice. On our way back, we took
a speedboat from Torcello to San Marco, which was thrilling and unforgettable
experience.
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Colorful houses at Burano...
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We then took a lift to reach top of bell tower to adore beautiful
island from the top, which gave us a 360 degree panorama view and chance to
capture some beautiful pictures.
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St Giorgio
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View captured from vaporetto..
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The last hop was the gondola trip, which
reminded us the song from 1979 ‘do lafzo ki hai dil ki kahani’ (The Great
Gambler) and provided an insight into a history. We began our journey back to
Zurich next morning with lot of memories and moments to cherish from the Venetian architecture, the Grand Canal, the
Basilica, alleys and their gondolas and many other highlights that will remain
with us for life.
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| The famous Gondola trip - must have... |
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| The bridge of sighs...used to take prisoners to prison from palace.. |
Photo Courtsey: Samsung Note 3
