David Fiske Affiliate Marketing & Web Development

I had booked my Red Letter Days incentive to Venice for this weekend just gone by. Thanks to the volcanic ash, we (wifey and me) didn't know if we would be able to go, let alone come back! The restrictions were eased last week and we travelled over to Gatwick Airport fully expecting our flight to be cancelled. Thankfully, Easyjet were running as normal so we managed to jet off for a long weekend to Venice.
 
The flights

We've not flown with Easyjet before and having flown with British Airways and Virgin Atlantic, we weren't really sure what to expect. Sky Three repeats of Airline don't instil much confidence!

Nevertheless, the flights were good. We were delayed leaving both London and Venice by around 15 minutes.

Customs

By a stroke of genius and efficient Italian border control staff, we cleared customs before our bags were offloaded onto the luggage carousel. Given that the plane was on a very fast turnaround, that was quite impressive and certainly unexpected. We've had to wait in a queue for an hour before getting into the US so 5 minutes by contrast is fantastic!

Returning back to the UK saw a good 20 minute long queue. Perhaps one day we'll see that the US system of one queue for native citizens and one for everyone else is really the way forward. An EU queue doesn't offer the same benefits of speed when returning home!

Transfers

We had been booked a transfer and from the paperwork and a bit of Interweb research, we expected this to be a shared water taxi which would take 1.5 hours and would drop us off somewhere near the hotel. We saw many people use this service and then look completely lost when they arrived, map in hand and a hand on their head.

It transpired that we had been booked the crème de la crème of airport transfers. We walked out of arrivals to see our name on a board. We were whisked to a private mini bus where we were driven to a private water taxi waiting for us. In a James Bond style we then sailed to the entrance of the hotel in style. The transfer took around half an hour and we were escorted all the way which was a far cry from the shared mini bus we've always opted for elsewhere.

Hotel

We stayed at the Hotel Bonvecchiati which was very close to the Piazza San Marco (Saint Mark's Square) and the Rialto bridge. The room was hot despite the air con and had a view over some pipes but that meant we just stayed out longer!


(San Marco Square)

What we got up to

Admittedly we hadn't done a lot of research for this holiday. For the others we've been on we have always had a list of places to go to or things we wanted to do but this holiday crept up on us so we did what I imagine most people do and went on holiday and did whatever felt right.

It was raining on the Friday and Saturday so we decided to do some exploring leaving Sunday to take all the photos. That was a smart move although we did get a bit carried away with the walking! One day we walked from Piazza San Marco down to the Giardini Pubblici. On another day we walked to just short of where the SR11 road begins. That's a lot of walking!


(Grand Canal)

In the process, we found loads of boutiques specialising in pasta, oils and confectionery. We sampled some fine Italian coffee and propped up the ice cream trade too!

We used local restaurants and cafes so didn't try then Venetian outlet of McDonalds or Burger King. We did have a coffee at the Hard Rock Cafe in Venice more so out of desperation of needing a coffee and wanting to avoid the "€10 a cup" coffee (not far off £10) in Piazza San Marco.

On Sunday night we joined 22 other people for a romantic gondola serenade. Split across 4 gondoli (?), we sailed together as an Italian singer and accordion player sang a few songs. We travelled up the Grand Canal - the M25 of Venice! After a bit of rocking about as the taxis and water buses hurtled past us, we turned off into a peaceful and tranquil canal where we meandered back around to the start.


(Gondola Serenade)

Summing Up

A great couple of days spent exploring a new culture and experiencing. Many thanks to Joshna and Angela at Red Letter Days together with Neils at NDL Group, and the staff at Alba Travel SRL for making the transfers and excursions hassle free.