San Marcos Square - Venice

Running around after Meredith

Meredith started running during our trip. She would runs a few steps and then turn around to see if we can catch up with her. We were exhausted by the amount of walking we had to do during this trip. Meredith was mostly carried around by us but from time to time she would find a place to sit on the sidewalk and just sit still for a few minutes.

Meredith saw a dog as we were eating pizza during our first night in Venice. She wouldn't sit still the minute she saw the dog.

We started taking photos of Meredith with the dog and the dog owner started taking photos of Meredith.

More Gondola Pictures

This is a boat selling fresh produce on the island of Murano.

Arriving in Venice

The first gondola the I saw! This is at the water bus stop right outside of Venice train station.

Venice is about 3 hours train ride from Florence. It was hard to keep Meredith occupied during the train ride. Once onboard, I took her to the dining car every half an hour for her to play around so her mum can get a break. We scrambled around in the train station before we boarded the train to find something that she will eat.

Arrived at Venice train station. Both mum and Meredith were tired after the train ride. There's no bench or chairs at Venice station to sit on. They waited for me in the train station lobby while I stood in line for half an hour to ask for direction to Murano Island and where to take the vaporetto (water bus).

After waiting for half an hour, the info desk guy pointed to the left and the vaporetto (water bus) stop was right there! Well, at least he told us which vaporetto to take to Murano. Venice train station is adjacent to the largest the vaporetto stop. We bought a three days vaporetto ticket for 30 euro per person. In this photo, mum and Meredith still looked tired. They were standing on the train station door and the vaporetto stop is right behind us.

Meredith settled into the water bus. She was puzzled by the rocking motion of the boat. She had never ride in a boat before and everything around her was surrounded by water. She kept looking at the various boats passing by in front of us.

Her anxiety soon turned into amazement as the magic of Venice - a world surrounded by water unfold before her eyes.


The Grand Canal. This is the Westheimer Blvd. or I should say I-10 of Venice. Transport barges, gondolas, water buses, DHL boats delivering parcels and water ambulances crowded this main waterway in Venice.

Despite the hustle and bustle of the main canals, there many smaller canals that motor boat cannot access. As the gondola glided into a small canal and the sound of wave washes against the centuries old doorsteps, Venice seems to transport you back a few centuries to the days of its full glory.

Venice- aerial view of San Marcos Square

Leaning Tower of Pisa

All the tourists were posing with their hands doing Taichi moves to push against the Pisa tower. At first I was having fun observing these people. After a while, I realized we were just regular tourists like these folks and we had to do the routine tourists pose too since we are already here.

Pisa's leaning tower

Our rental car is the Ford Focus on the left. It has a diesel engine, even the BMW on the right has a diesel engine. Diesel is popular in Europe. The Ford Focus has a manual gear box, and I find the acceleration to be adequate even though the engine is only 1.8liter.

We drove 80km from Florence to Pisa to see the leaning tower. I have always remember the leaning from my primary school text book. I remembered referencing the Pisa tower when I wrote some of my school essay in the form of "Pada satu hari, Ali and Ahmat pergi ke menara Pisa." So, I'm glad to be able to see the leaning tower in person. To be honest, the leaning tower of Pisa is just a plain jane tower. Without the engineering or site selection mistake, Pisa's tower will be just another tower in Italy.


Meredith holding on to her sunblock. She didn't know she was at the leaning tower. She just know it was a hot, hot day, almost as hot as Houston.

Prosciutto Cruddo

Most of streets in Italy are quite narrow. Traffic are chaotic just like Malaysia. Italian drivers will make three lanes out of a two lanes street just like in Malaysia. So if you can drive in Malaysia, you wouldn't be intimidated by traffic here.


Most of the cars are small. Unlike Houston, it is rare to see nicer cars such as this new Audi TT.

We drove to a town called Greve in Chianti region of Tuscany and stumbled upon this delightful shop selling prosciutto cruddo. Prosciutto cruddo is known simply as prosciutto in America. For Italian, they differentiate between prosciutto cotto (cooked deli ham that most Americans think of as ham0 and prosciutto crudo (cured ham-not cooked). The legs of ham were hung like bee hives all over this shop. I think Italians eat a lot of prosciutto. There's always someone standing in line buying prosciutto whenever I go to a grocery store.

Meredith ate some cured ham too! Boon Hong and I ate a lot of cured ham for two weeks. We could not bring it back to the US due the US custom regulations so we ate what can. Actually, we were planning to bring it back to the US but we had to finish the 1kg that we bought after we found out we cannot bring it back with us.