Meri Kalam Se..: Visit to floating city of dreams

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.

Bridge at Arsenale

Small bridges connecting two of the 118 small islands..

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.

Beautiful painting on the building , captured on our way to
Rialto Bridge through Grande Canal...

Rialto Bridge...

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.

Heart of the island... San Marco square..

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.

Beautifully carved ceiling...

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.

Colorful houses at Burano...

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.

St Giorgio

View captured from vaporetto..

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.