Visiting Venice and vacating Vicenza - sun and snowcaps

So we have arrived this afternoon at our penultimate destination - Bergamo. We have settled into our room at the Holiday Inn Express, had dinner at a local 100 yr old trattoria and about to hit the sack in anticipation of a day driving around Lake Como - weather forecast being as accurate as they have been to date.

Yesterday, relying on those forecasts we headed off to Vencie and as predicted, the sun shone through mid-afternoon and the rain held off all day, allowing us a very cool but still day to wander the streets and canals. The single most striking thing was that Venice is the most commerialised of all the places we have visited so far - without a shadow of doubt. So I will comment on that no more and try to show you some much more enjoyable images :-)


Fancy - gondolas on the
Venice Grand Canal!



Not all hussle and bussle though

 After wandering around exploring all sorts of larger and smaller streets and canals, we were surprised at how clean and not smelly it all seemed - at times as though it all just been hosed down. That said, there was a lot of construction and renovation underway in many places which meant some of the views were not what they might have been ... and yet again, we were grateful to be here at this time of year for all the reasons mentioned in earlier posts. Next are a couple of "must sees" on the tourist trail ...



Ponte di Rialto



Piazza San Marco in the afternoon sun

We also managed to get some good shots with us included and some really interesting panoramas. I have included two below with one or both of us included and then one of the panoramas which was fortunate to catch rather a spectacular cloud pattern in the afternoon sun - a nice contrast to the gloom and damp of the previous few days ...

A remarkable photo getting
Deb so close to the canal

Deb looking far happier with a bridge
& a walkway around her



Canale di San Marco

And so you can, we hope, get some feel for the coolness of the day and also the change in the weather for the better over the time we were there. We will leave Venice with an image from dusk as we returned to the Stazione for our ride back to Vincenza - this is basically the same area as the first picture above, though looking back to the bride where that first photo was taken from. A nice final memory of Venice for us.



Ponte degli Scalzi near the
Stazione

 The title referred to snowcaps. It was so smoggy in Vincenza when we arrived that we did not even know there were mountains so close - let alone with snow on them! So, when we were on the train to Venice we saw them, and this morning on a beautiful clear sunny morning, we were able to get some snaps of them. We also managed so updated shots of Vicenza showing off the autumn colours in teh sunshine - quite lovely as you will see. And, with these we sill sign off until next time ... as always, the rain seems to bring everything to life again (of course, a couple of days is something you would mostly be longing for on the north coast :-) ...

Sunny Vicenza with snowcaps in the distance

Autumn on Viale Dalmazia
(snowcap right at the end)

Loggia Valmarana in Giardini Salvi

Piazza dei Signori

Sunny valley view through
a villa driveway

How about that for a
divine memory of Vicenza!