Life's Journey Having fun, exploring new places and cultures, volunteering, learning & reflecting.

Laura Writes:

Well, our last stop in Europe was Treviso (Italy) approximately 100 kilometros from Venice.

Dad drove from Austria to Treviso on a warm and sunny day. The trip took around 5 or 6 hours, but it was an interesting journey through very picturesque villages and with great views of the snow capped mountains all around us.

Treviso was a great place to stay and like Venice, it was full of historical buildings such as churches and other buildings dating back to approximately the 13th and 14th century. The narrow roads still had their original coble stones. The buildings were constucted with arches and walking along the footpaths was very unique as it felt like you were walking through tunnels. On some of the walls and ceilings ancient paintings were still visible.

Nigel and I caught a train on a couple of occasions to Venice, once with Mum and the second time by ourselves. The train trip only took around 45 minutes and the cost of the tickets were pretty reasonable.

Venice was different and not like any other place I have ever been to. The first day we went to Venice, we got caught up in looking at the souvenirs in the many shops on our way to the main plaza. We were quite surprised when we realised that several hours had gone by while walking through the many streets, it was like walking through a labyrinth!

After spending so much time walking and looking at the houses and unique "streets", exploring the Palace and taking photos, we regreted not having made the time to take a ride on a Gondola. This would have given us another perspective of the channels than the perspective we got walking the streets. It would have been a unique experience not possible anywhere else in the world...

The climate in that part of Italy was quite warm, as we had temperatures around 28 celcius and it was a great Spring feeling in the air with the locals enjoying the great outdoors and eating a lot of ice-cream! The ice-cream shop was very popular to say the least and it was open until midnight every night. It was hard to go to sleep since the ice-cream shop was just across the street from where we were staying.

Anyway, this part of Italy was a nice experience and different to anywhere else we have been in the world.