Visiting a Bygone Era - The Magical Islands of Venice

After bidding adieu to Heidi land, we were soon at the security check queue to begin the next leg of our trip - Italy. After emptying our back packs to the security personnel and the kid's pram being rechecked because of the dry pine cones that he had filled into the back pouch, we were soon flying to Venice. As we were riding the bus that was taking us to the airport terminal at Venice, the little one held my hand and asked a lot of questions. 'Where are we now? How many days are we going to stay here?' and so on. We laughed thinking about what a vagabond he had blossomed into. Post his little baby days and as soon as he started taking an interest in the world around him (which took about 2.5 long yrs! Sigh ..), the kiddo took an immense liking for travel and everything about it from taxi rides and places of stay to sightseeing. Much to our good luck, thank God!

The initial 2 hours at Italy turned out to be a bit of  a struggle. Language was quite a problem, for very few seemed to understand or speak English. With the help of Google, we somehow located the bus that would take us to the bus stop nearest to our place of stay. After we alighted, we spent close to an hour trying to find our way to the apartment stay that we had booked. A slight rain added to our woes and it was already close to 10 PM. Finally we flagged down a passing taxi. The driver took one look at the location and charged a bomb. We got in, for we had no other choice and reached our destination in under 3 minutes! The driver just shrugged and mumbled about minimum charges.

Our host arrived just as we were unloading our luggage. He then told us that we could have opted for a pick up from the airport and he would have come there himself. We made a mental note for future. The apartment that we had booked for our stay was a spacious one with a big living room cum kitchen, a huge balcony, a cozy nice bed room with comfortable beds and a clean bathroom with state of the art fittings. AirBnb and Booking. com were sure giving hotels a run for their money! 

Putting the slightly bumpy start at Italy behind us, we sunk into our comfortable beds and slept it all off. Next morning, post cooking and eating a tiffin of Poha, we started out armed with umbrellas, kid needs and dabbas packed with rasam rice and vegetables. Yes, we are like that only :) But hey, try surviving 20 days on whatever scraps of vegetarian food you can salvage in Europe and you would say we are totally right! Wouldn't it be sad if you hated your Europe trip just because you got sick of bread, Pizzas and bland pasta and went to a state of mind when you became ready to kill someone for a morsel of curd rice, sambar or Upma! :)

We picked up a map from a nearby shop to help us with all the 'Vaporetti' routes (Boats that ply like buses in the Venetian waterways) and reached the dock of the islands of Venice. We soon hopped into  the first vaporetti with a lot of excitement.  The sights of Venice were magical from the first through the last of what we saw. It was literally like visiting a bygone era. The ancient buildings and roads, the very characteristics sights and smells and the fact that everything was on a waterside made the experience totally unique and beautiful. 

Though Venice had a lot of landmarks to visit like any other tourist destination, for the first half of the day, we chose to just ride the routes and walk around the cobbled alleys, enjoying the ambience that was so unique to this beautiful land. We rode the vaporetti from one stop to another, taking in the sights of the old buildings by the banks. We jumped off at a stop and walked around for sometime, stopped at a pizzeria for some snacks, bought some gelato and ate it, leaning on a bridge to watch the boats and people as they floated by. It was pretty much free flow and we thoroughly enjoyed just being there and soaking in the very characteristic environment of Venice.  

Here are some pictures from the morning of exploration :

First views of Venice

A charming narrow waterway

A pretty little ancient church that we walked into while exploring the many alleys of Venice

Gelato section at a road side pizzeria

The tasty thin crust Pizza that we ate before Gelato :)

A colourful spice store

For the next half of the day, we visited Burano - one of the many islands in Venice which is famous for its colours and lace making. This was a longer boat ride from the main island and we enjoyed the sights of expanse of water with far away banks. We landed in Burano after about 30 mins and walked on inside, to explore the island. The narrow waterway lined with colourful houses on either side, the market place bustling with restaurants, shops, bakeries and tourists, the quiet residential streets with trees, beautiful plants and houses painted in bright colours were all such a treat for the eyes. It happened to be my husband's birthday and as we sat at a restaurant to eat lunch, we had him cut a small piece of cake to celebrate. By the side, a street musician played a string instrument, singing along beautifully and a mild shower added to the magical ambience. 

Waterway inside Burano

Here are some pictures of the very beautiful residential lanes of Burano with their stone roads, beautiful trees, plants and flowers and the brightly painted houses. 

It was around 4 pm when we jumped into the return vaporetti from Burano. We sailed to famous St.Mark's Sqaure to see the clock tower and walked around the sqaure. It housed some very posh restaurants and had musicians performing by the side. We then walked around some small streets and spent some time watching the Gondala boats, with the boatmen sporting their famous typical attire with hats on, as they maneuvered the narrow side waterways skillfully. 

One of the bridges that we stopped at had a doorway at the dead end before it led to the street via a starcase. It made me think about the local population who had their homes amidst all the shops and touristy bustle. I wondered how it must feel to have crowds of people from around the world walking by your house, clicking pictures and looking at your home too as part of all the sights that they have come to see. Many of them probably owe their livelihood to the bustling tourism but am sure they yearn for some peace and quiet too. 

The famous and expensive Gondola with its boatmen in costume

St.Mark's Sqaure

The Doge's Palace 

After spending the whole day wandering around the streets and waterways of Venice, we took a vaporetti back to the main land. It was close to sunset and the lighting changed from the golden hues of the evening to the dark of the night even as we were on this journey. As the old buildings and bridges lit up for the night, the sight was so magical. It was literally like visiting a bygone era and induced such a sense of awe that made us get totally get immersed in them. Here are some pictures : 

We went back to our place of stay in a trance like state after that beautiful day spent at a wonderland. Next morning, we packed up, vacated our place of stay and went to the train station at Venice. We had about 2 hours left before we boarded the train to Florence, our next destination in Italy. There was a huge line for the locker room. So we decided to take turns to do one last round before we left Venice. The husband and kid visited a nearby church while I watched our luggage. For my turn, I just bought a gelato, climbed up a bridge and savored it staring at the waters below, watching boats pass by and looking at the buildings, houses and shops lining the banks, taking in one last piece of Venice before we left :)

 

Switzerland Day 5 - Bidding Adieu with a trip to Heidi land!

On our last day in Switzerland, we decided to wrap up with a visit to Mount Stanserhorn. After the customary early morning rise, cooking and packing, we vacated our place of stay and put away the luggage in the lockers at the Lucerne railway station (a fully automated, convenient and safe option). We then picked up some goodies at one of the cafes and boarded a bus to reach the base of Mount Stanserhorn, where a very quaint wooden cogwheel train greeted us :) As always, the ascent was lush green and we were constantly accompanied by the typical clang of the Swiss cattle bells.

The magical view as we chugged up the mountain

After alighting from the cogwheel train, we walked up the remaining distance on the very neatly laid trek path. The scenery was truly a grand finale to our Swiss trip - stunning green and snowy mountains all around and absolute silence with just the cattle bells reverberating across the valley every now and then. I remember standing still for a while, just to take in the scene around me and soak in that silence. Those moments of total silence while surrounded by nature still remain etched in my memory. 

The imposing mountains and lush greenery that surrounded us as we trekked up

After that scenic trek up to the summit where we spent some time enjoying the panoramic views, we began our descent and a surprise awaited me. A little wooden cabin stood enroute with a board that said 'Heidi's house'! I did a quick google search and found out that the fictional town and setting that featured in the book 'Heidi' was actually conceptualised based on this very mountain! Oh how thrilled I was! I had read Heidi just the previous summer and completely fallen in love with everything about the book, especially the fairytale mountaintop village where Heidi lived with her grandfather. I looked around the mountains with renewed awe and went into a reverie for a while until a cranky kid and a harried husband with eyes on the clock shook me out of it. We had a train to catch and a flight to board soon after that!

Heidi's house!

A dream like cogwheel ride, bus ride and train ride later, we bid adieu to the most beautiful place in the world and flew over to the next leg of our trip - Italy. We landed in Venice, looking forward to explore the magical and historic islands from a bygone era :) 

Switzerland Day 4 - Lake Lucerne and Mount Rigi

Having settled down at our accommodation at Lucerne, we did the all important laundry, walked at a nearby grassland to watch the sunset, cooked and ate dinner. I also learnt all the buttons and codes needed to operate inside the digital fortress that we were staying in. The cupboard dryer did not exactly cupboard dry the clothes and the husband did multiple dryer rounds. We finally spread them out on every surface in the room and in this ambience, we crashed on our beds and went into a sound sleep.

Come morning, we were up and ready for our mountain hike. A cruise on the beautiful Lake Lucerne took us to the foot of mount Rigi. An extremely scenic cogwheel train ride later, we had snaked right up the mountain. Here are the pictures.

Lake Lucerne

Panorama of the lake as we cogwheeled up Mount Rigi :)

Lost in these breathtaking views, we reached the top of Mount Rigi. But as luck would have it, it was a very foggy day and absolutely nothing was visible from the top. It was quite cold  and we waited for sometime at a cafe while treating ourselves to some hot soup and snacks. Even after an hour, the fog showed no signs of clearing up and so we started to trek down to a lower height to get some views. And what a treat it was! 

As we gradually walked down the neatly laid trek path, we were constantly accompanied by views of lake Lucerne surrounded by mountains and green slopes all the way. The rows of pine trees at some places, meadows at another, different angles and different heights created a fresh scenery at every turn and we were wonderstruck by each of them without exception.  We stopped, started, took pictures and could just not have enough of it all! 

Kid enjoyed in his own way, playing with fallen pine cones and jibber jabbering all the way :). He also  collected a bunch of pine cones and put them in the back sack of his pram, laying down a rule that it absolutely had to remain there at all times. We were questioned about it in every single airport security check for the rest of the trip and it stayed at home for a month thereafter, until I stealthily did away with them one day :) 

Here are some pictures we clicked during our trek down Mount Rigi.

We did the last part of the descent on a cable car. After alighting and walking through what felt like a painting of clean, green meadows peppered with chalets and houses, we reached the banks of Lake Lucerne. 

After a nice meal of tasty spagetthi at a cafe, we spent some time by the lakeside on a wooden dock and the little one had his evening meal watching the ducks swim by. There was still some time left for our cruise ship to come and we used the time to stroll the streets and get a feel of the place. 

The people were extremely polite and law abiding. The minute an approaching car spots us trying to cross a road, they would see the kid and pram and stop the car to let us pass! It seemed so unusual from back home where everyone wants to go first :)

After a pleasant walk, we were back at the banks of lake Lucerne and the cruise ship came bang on time. We got in and enjoyed a breezy, quiet and scenic trip back to the mainland. 

After alighting, we went to the much famed flower bridge at Lucerne. It looked as beautiful in reality as it does in the pictures that abound on the internet. After walking through it and clicking pictures, we strolled the surrounding area. With pretty buildings lining the sides of the lake and to the accompaniment of street musicians singing and playing the harmonica, the sun slowly began to set, shining an ethereal light on the entire scene. And we just stood and took it all in.

Lucerne at Sunset

The Chapel Bridge