Cafe Florian in Venice

Venice, the city of canals and gondolas. A place I can't wait to go and see.

I was watching one of my favorite travel shows called "Backpackers" (on the Outdoor Life Network) the other day, and the were visiting Vienna. Anyway, while there they visited a cafe called "Cafe Florian" and it looked really cool. It is the oldest cafe in Europe founded in 1720. The interior has a really cool ornate look that probably hasn't changed since it opened, and it has a seating area outside in St.Marks Square, with about 100 chairs, the type of cafe seating so often seen in pictures of Venice.

It is supposed to have some great coffee, and I thought it would be a great experience. The only thing that takes away from it is that the coffees cost around 7 Euros, which translates to be about $20 Canadian it will have to be one of the luxuries on the trip. As you can see from the pictures below it is a pretty cool place. Hopefully the coffee will be worth it. The guys on the show had this to say, "I don't know anything about coffee, but this is really good coffee" so I guess that kinda sums it up. I will be sure to let you know. On one final note looking for famous people that lived in Venice and may have had a coffee there I found out that Casanova actually lived in Venice from 1725-1798, so he probably went here. Pretty cool. Anyway hope you like the pictures.

The exterior of Cafe Florian in St.Marks Square

The entry way...

An interior shot, it's really amazing

Cafe Florian, looks like it hasn't changed in 300 years

A few more things to take

Well I finally sent off my passport application today. I had it reviewed at the post office as there isn't a passport office in PEI. It costs an extra $15 for them to review it, but they check the picture and application for any issues and guarantee it won't get rejected so its worth the extra money for peace of mind. As a result of my application I had to get a government piece of ID, so instead of getting just an ID, I thought that it would be the perfect time to get my beginners drivers licence. So now I can finally drive a car legally. I know its a bit late, but like I have said all along I have never needed it and the money always had a better place.

I also bought a nice summer sweater to wear while in Europe today. I have a good shirt folder that will keep wrinkles out of clothes (thanks Chad and Heidi), but I thought a nice sweater would be something that I could wear to a restaurant and wouldn't need to be ironed. We also picked up a couple of cheap bed sheets that we will fold in half and sew up to make a light sleeping bag. This light bag will help us keep clean as we will be sleeping a lot of hostels and will save us money as many hostels require people to rent linen if they don't have their own.

So we are slowly picking up things along the way to take with us on the trip. Can't wait to get my passport back, they said it should be back the first week of March, so even if its late there will be time to spare.

Trying something new...

Well, I have decided that posting regularly has not been something I have done lately, and I need to make a change. So for now on instead of trying to put up posts following the route that we are going to take, I will post differently. I received three different guidebooks for Christmas and thought that I might be able to post more often if I post interesting information that I read in them and post any other interesting things I find out during my preparations. I need to read the books so this should help me get through them as well. So here is a neat budget saver that I just read.

Dublin Area Rapid Transit (DART)

This a neat trick on how to get a scenic trip around Dublin. The way you get to see Dublin is by boarding the local rapid transit system or DART train as seen above, which is laid out on a track along the bay. The trick is when you by your ticket you tell the cashier that you are going to the next station, but you don't get off right away. The rail line runs back and forth, so you can simply ride the entire system and then get off at the station you bought the ticket for once it comes around again. The entire trip costs 89p. How cool is that! Since we will be visiting Dublin towards the end of our trek, this may be something that we choose to do to save a few pounds.

Hope you liked the new posting idea.