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Venice Travel Pictures

Venice is an incredibly beautiful city, it doesn’t take very long to get lost or to walk through the entire city. The best way to get around is via Vaporetto, basically the public transportation system of Venice. People hop onto one of the water buses and get off where they need to. The Vaporetto’s cover the main island (Venice) as well as the outer islands in the area.
We arrived in Venice early afternoon and took the time to wander around. On our first full day we took the Vaporetto across the island to San Marco. Here’s the view:

Here I am sitting on one of the many bridges that dot the city.

From San Marco, this is the famous Bascili. There are a ton of pigeons and people love to feed them and have them crawl over their body. Not my cup of tea.

If you looked at my panorama photos, you will have noticed a bunch taken of Venice. Those were all taken from the bell tower and here’s a view of the piazza from the top.

Back on the vaporetto, we kept passing by this museum with a skull made of our different pieces of metal, a photo just had to be taken.

The Grand Canal during sunset is truly a beautiful sight, here are a few pictures during dusk.

This picture was taken on the way back from Lido, one of the islands near Venice. Many of the workers in Venice don’t actually stay on Venice because it is too expensive, instead many of them live on the islands like Lido.
We spend one day on Murano and Burano, two other islands near Venice. Murano is famous for their glass work and Burano is famous for their colorful houses and lace factories. There are very few lace factories around these days.

No trip to Venice is complete without a Gondola ride so we took one. It cost 60Eur for 30 minutes but our Gondola guy also sang and give us a history lesson of the area while he rowed us around.

Tags: Burano, Europe, graduation trip, Lido, Murano, photos, San Marco, Venice

. 04 Jul 08 | Photography, Travel | Comment (1)

London Travel Pictures

I promised I would share some pictures of my Europe Grad Trip, so let’s finally begin. The journey begins in London so that’s where the pictures will start.

After arriving in London around 7PM we made it into town and wandered with our bags until we could check in. Our first stop was at Piccadilly Circus:

We then moved onto the Big Ben where I observed how the clock was a few minutes fast.

Wandering along the waterfront we were able to see what the London Eye looked like, we didn’t actually go up.

From here, we continued wandering through St. James Park and made our way to the front of Buckingham Palace where we watched the guards changed. This is an hour long event and not a 2 minute job that I thought it was!

By this point it was approaching noon and we had been up for most of our flight and walked around for a few hours with our bags. After a quick lunch at Cheers we checked into our Hotel – Hilton. Outside the hotel was this yellow Lotus so I took a picture.

The next day we went down to the Thames Rivers and checked our the Tower Bridge, Tower of London, looked at HMS Belfast and a random piece of artwork in the area.

We also walked to the Globe Theater which we went back to later in the evening to watch King Lear from the 5GBP standing area.

On our way to dinner we passed by the Court house.

Our on next day we went to Regents Park.

We also stopped by at Camden Market and picked up panoramas of London.

Here’s a view looking down one of two elevators required to get to the tube from our station.

The day after that we went to Hyde Park, the Orangerie (where I stole an orange off their tree) and the Science Museum.

Early the next day we made our way out to Stansted Airport and flew with Ryanair to Venice.

Tags: Buckingham Palace, Changing of the guards, Europe 2008, graduation trip, Hyde Park, London, London Eye, Lotus, Orangerie, photos, Ryanair, Shakespeare, St. James Park, Venice

. 03 Jul 08 | Photography, Travel | Comment (1)

School Out…Trip Time!

I finished my last undergraduate exam on Wednesday and for the past few days I’ve been getting ready for my trip. It was a good feeling to be done, five years of which one was spent working with Petro-Canada as an intern. I’ll be rejoining them July 7th as a Plant Engineering and it’ll be nice to see everyone again. In the meantime, there is a lot more trip planning and packing to do. Expect more blog posts as the days leading up to my departure gets closer and closer. We’ve have nearly finalized all of our accommodations, just waiting for one apartment to confirm. If I don’t hear from them Monday, I will start making phone calls.

I’ll be carrying an old MEC Brio 70 that will house my stuff and Karen’s. I’ll be bringing along my laptop and PDA (GPS) so that will add to the weight as we move around in Italy via train. Regardless it should be a ton of fun.

Here are the cities we’ll be visiting and the order it’ll occur in: London, Venice, Milan, Florence, Pisa, Rome and finally Paris before returning home June 10th.

Tags: Europe 2008, graduation trip, undergraduate

. 02 May 08 | School, Technology | Comments (2)

Europe Trip Planning – The Budget v2

I spent some time updating my budget based on a few resources I have. The schedule has not changed but the prices have certainly gone up. Using Hotwire, Priceline and expedia.com, I have managed to create a more realistic hotel budget. I’m hoping that by bidding on Priceline, I’ll be able to shave the costs down a bit more. I’ll stay on the high side until that actually happens.

To date, my journey for two will cost. $9089.73 excluding the cost of activities we haven’t planned for. This does creep into my 1K contingency budget, but it’s a manageable amount. More planning to come as soon as the school work load goes lightens. It’ll be nice to have the flights booked by early April and just hotel booking during the month of April in between studying for exams.

I’m still looking for suggestions on things to do, places to stay and ways of cutting down on the overall cost. Ping me if you have any leads!

Tags: Budget, Europe 2008, graduation trip, Travel

. 25 Mar 08 | Travel | Comments (0)

Europe Trip Planning – The Schedule & Budget v1

I promised to deliver and update on the schedule and budget planning of my 2008 Europe trip for 2. With the long weekend approaching, I decided to take the entire night off and work on this instead. Whether or not this is a good idea has yet to be determined. There’s still a fair bit of work to do for school but this is far more enjoyable and relaxing!

The planned departure date is 8:35PM from Toronto on May 7, 2008. We’ll take an evening flight that will allow us to sleep through most of it. The estimated arrival time in London is 8:35 AM, giving us a whole day to recuperate, relax and enjoy the city. From London, the plan is to travel to Rome by plane and then visit Venice, Milan, Florence and Pisa by train. From Pisa, we’ll return to Rome and fly out to Paris the next day. We’ll stay in Paris for 10 days and then return back to Toronto on the June 10, 2008.

The budget is still 9K for planning + 1K for any unforeseeable costs. I’ve guessed some food and living costs and I’ve more or less exhausted the budget. If I hope to find some great deals through priceline, apartment rentals or just browsing the net to save a few extra bucks.

Here’s a more detailed look at the itinerary. It’s subject to many changes. I’m still looking for suggestions as to places I must visit, so ping me back with a comment or email!