Friday 9-10-15
We had a lazy start to the morning as our driver was not allowed to start driving until he'd had his required 45 hour break so we left at 9.45am. Everyone appreciated it and it meant we could have a bit of a sleep in. We drove on to the beautiful stop at Siena. Unfortunately in Italy, whenever you stop in a town you must pay a tax. Ben thinks it's run by the Mafia but Rob saw it as a parking payment. We had real difficulty finding the place to pay but finally we did. We walked into the heart of Siena and it took about 15 minutes. It is stunningly, beautiful renaissance town with old buildings and a magnificent square in the centre that occasionally hosts a horse race. ( The square is paved so they would have to truck in loads of sand for the race but we did see some photos.) Siena is another place I would love to go back to and spend a few days exploring. Still we were lucky to have seen what we did. We had lunch as we walked around and fimished with gelarti...a speciality of Italy.
We were back on the bus at 4pm ready to continue on to Venice. We made it into Venice around 8.15pm and dropped our bags into our room. Our tour guide had offered to take us into Venice for a pizza dinner and introduction to the city, in the evening. We were more than happy to do this. We took a tram into Venice and although it was dark it was just as beautiful as I had imagined. It was a perfect still night with very few tourists around and the canals and lighting was such a treat. Ben took us to the pizza place and we had the most delicious pizza slice, a drink (soft drink or beer) and 2 scoops of gelati ice-cream. All for €5. It was one of the best pizzas we'd had in our lives. It was great to walk around the islands and canals with absolutely no traffic, including bikes. Everything is that is in the town is bought in by boat on the canals and then carted on hand carts. Of course everything has to be taken off like that too.
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