Florence to Venice!

Left Florence nice and early on the 8:38am Eurostar Italia train to Venice! No problems getting to the station but it took a while for the platform number to come up. The trip took about 2 hrs 30mins. We were both so sleepy from the early start that we nodded off on the train! We arrived in Venice Mestre station around 11:05am!

Using our google map we hiked about 15-20mins to Hotel Centrale where we’re staying for the first 2 nights of the tour. Along the way our first impressions of mainland Venice was that it was cleaner, more modern and less touristy than any of Italy that we had seen thus far! We also passed a whole row of asian supermarkets and Chinese restaurants!!! We checked out the menus and they seemed reasonable so who knows, might end up there tomorrow night or something!

At the hotel reception desk, we found we were too early for check in so we dumped our bags in their locker room and decided to wander around the area and grab some lunch. We checked out the local shopping centre, the first one we’ve seen in Italy! It wasn’t big and there wasn’t a food court so we kept on going. We noticed that this part of Venice seemed pretty dead as there were hardly any people around, let alone tourists. Perhaps it was siesta time for the locals. We ended up in a little Trattoria around the corner and had some pretty decent pasta with salmon and ravioli. As has often been the case, we were the first people in the restaurant and by the time we left we had drawn a few more tables of people into the restaurant!

We checked out the local supermarket and fresh fruit/seafood market before heading back to our hotel to check in. Our room turned out to be decent enough, similar in standard to our hostel except that they provide towels and shampoo etc. After napping the whole afternoon, we went down to the hotel lobby to meet our tour group at 6pm. There was only one other couple there - Nick and Toni. Around 6:45pm, the tour bus arrived (from Rome - we’re joining the tour mid way) and we met Jaz our tour leader and Matt our driver. After admin stuff, we returned to our rooms before meeting again at 8pm to go out for dinner together.

We met a lovely mixed couple - Jordan (Aussie) and Erica (HK) - from Perth and ended up sitting with them for dinner. Jordan’s in e-commerce and Erica does government work and both are kinda on a second honeymoon! Heard about how the tour’s been going so far and it sounds pretty hectic! Glad we’ve been taking it easy thus far!

Dinner was pretty good (according to tour dinner standards apparently) and we had lasagna, pizza and tiramisu. Afterwards it was time to get a good a night’s rest for the actual start of our tour tomorrow! Nite!