Venice to Florence, Day 7 - 20th February 2016 (Part Two)

Hugh and I returned from our early morning walk and tucked into our last breakfast at hotel Abadessa. I had been eating mostly pastries, toast and cereal each day up until now, so decided to be adventurous and have a more Italian-style breakfast, choosing delicious salami and cheese to eat with some freshly baked bread.

Most museums in Venice did not open until 10am, and so far we had not really managed to explore any, so we decided to make use of our 'Rolling Venice' pass to get a discounted €12 ticket (a €7 saving per person) to the Museo Correr and Doge's Palace at San Marco. We spent a good hour wandering through the Museo Correr, gazing at the antiquities and paintings.

In the Biblioteca

Mirror Selfie in the beautiful Museo Correr

Looking at old things somehow makes for thirsty work so we stopped for a hot chocolate and coffee at the Museum cafe, choosing seats that overlooked the San Marco Basilica. As we sipped on our warming drinks we noticed a small group of youths dancing. They were soon joined by others, and Hugh and I realised we were watching a flash mob bringing some energy and life to the square. The dancers movements sent greedy and complacent pigeons scattering. I was not-so-secretly very happy that the dancers had managed to disperse the conglomerate of winged vermin. My husband will tell you with a chuckle about all of the times I complained about people feeding the pigeons and contributing to the 'Aviator flu' (when what I really meant was Avian Flu).  

By the time we had slowly shuffled through the Museo Correr (we ran out of time to see the Doge's Palace) it was well after 11am. We made our way back to our hotel to grab our bags. On the way we did stop at the 'Ramo Varisco', the smallest street in Venice at only 53cm wide. We made it about halfway down to the canal on the other side of the streets before we had to back out to let a bent-over old lady pass.

The Roma Varisco Calle

We checked out of Hotel Abadessa at around 12pm (the latest time for check-out), sheepishly explaining to the staff on duty that when we had opened a bottle of Prosecco last night, the cork had shot off and shattered a vase in the room. It was honestly something from a comedy movie, and our bad luck that the cork hit the only glass object in the room. I have to admit - we were terrified. After having been in Murano, and noting that the light fittings in our room and the glass in the lobby of Abadessa were all Murano glass, we expected to part with a sizable lump of money.  As luck would have it, the only things Abadessa owned in glass that didn't come from Murano were the vases, which we were told were worthless, and waved on our way.

Hearts much lighter and bank balance faring much better than we had expected after the broken vase scare, we proceeded to drag our bags back over the bridges of Venice to the train station.

Three hours later we were once again lugging our bags over uneven stone roads, eager to take on Florence.