16 May 2006

Vacanze Italiano 2006 - part 2

Our 2nd day in Venice began rather lazily as we left the residenza at 1030. We 1st headed to Fondamenta S. Simeon Piccolo to checkout some shops near Santa Lucia Train Station. Oh, the Ponte Dei Scalzi (Scalzi Bridge), which shares some similarity in appearance to Ponte di Rialto, is also there. Since we have visited most of the main tourist sites yesterday, we decided to spend our day primarily at the The Accademia di Belle Arti.

Situated on the south bank of the Grand Canal, it is Venices school of art and is uniformly known throughout Venice as the Accademia. After spending about 2 hours plus in the art gallery (it cost EUR6.50 to enter), we all agreed we had seen enough versions of Madonna & Child (& I dont mean the singer) to last us all for some time. The Campo di Salute at the eastern edge of the south bank was our next destination. Here, there is yet another chiesa as well as a nice view of Piazza San Marco side of the north bank. We then decided have dinner at a north bank area called Ghetto. I managed to finally savour a local specialty of cuttlefish in sauce made from the black ink of cuttlefish. Sedap (thats yummy, in Malay).

Walking around Venice for the past 2 days, I tend to agree that take away the wirings of modern electricity & what not, its not hard to believe that we may be seeing the place as it was a hundred years ago. This may be so true in the residential areas, where at times, the only sources of light are the sunlight & candles from mini altars in the walls.

This is where things get a little messy. We were supposed to travel from Venice to Como by train departing close to midnight. However, the counter lady who sold us the tickets must have misunderstood & screwed up our departure time, which to our inconvenience, we found out at the 11th hour. Hence, we were stuck in Venice for another night, as the ticket counters are closed & the station itself is closed from 1 to 4am (appears to be so at most main Italia main train stations) & we can only sort out our tickets at 6am the next morning.

Due to this fiasco, we only arrived at Como at noon on the 3rd day, a good 6 hours plus later than initially planned. As a result, we were unable to take any boats or ferries to explore the towns/areas around the lake or even find George Clooneys house (yes, he has a house in Como & my mates wanted to try & see if they can locate it). :D You may argue that we couldve just postponed it to the next day, but then itll throw off the schedule for the rest of the trip. Nevertheless, we did sort of vow to take the boat ride if we can squeeze some extra time from the next day.

Dinner at Como allowed us to dine on chicken & meat, as we found a Halal Turkish Restaurant near where we were staying. We loved the Turkish Pizza & I would recommend checking it out.

To be continued

Till later, live long & prosper.

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