This year was my wife Eileen and my 25th Wedding Anniversary, so we decided to go to Italy for 17 days in June - spending our actual anniversary in Florence.  I decided not to take my laptop with me, so I wasn't able to blog while we were traveling, so I am now taking the opportunity to tell the story of our "Italy 2008" trip.

Slept fitfully - the air conditioner only produced marginally cool air, and the room was a bit muggy. 

As we had nothing scheduled for the morning, we slept in, getting up just in time to grab some breakfast before they cleared up the hotel lobby at 10am.  The original plan was to go around the Doge's palace but as we did that last night we went around the Correr Museum (free with our Doge's Palace ticket) and spent the rest of the morning wandering around the shops in the area of St. Mark's.

The highpoint of the day was our afternoon walk (which we purchased in combination with the previous days Grand Canal tour from Avventure Bellissime).  We met in the same garden - this time being divided into groups of about 15 people for the walking tour with Sabine - our guide.  She made Venice's history come to life - it was an excellent tour.

Images of Venice

The tour started in St. Mark’s square where Sabine gave us some background history of Venice.  We then got to “jump” the line to enter the Basilica – given the hot day – and the fact that the Basilica was only open for 2 hours as it was a Sunday – this was the price of the tour alone.

After our walking tour we went to the church of Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari to see some of Venice's best art in the setting it was designed for.  For our last night in Venice we decided to have dinner at a Trattoria on the side of the Grand canal near the Rialto bridge.  We expected this to be expensive and mediocre food - but we were pleasantly surprised.

Dinner at a canal-side Trattoria

After dinner we walked back to St Mark's square to walk off our dinner - and realized the line was short (non-existent really) for the elevator up the campanile, so we went up and had some wonderful views - the bell chimed 8pm while we were up at the top.

The view from the top of the Campanile at St Mark's

All in all - another great day.  Tomorrow we head for Florence.

Useful Links:

• Avventure Bellissime – the tour company we used for the walking tour of Venice - www.tours-italy.com