Day 15: Venice

Grand Canal

I am smitten, simply smitten.  Venice is by far the most charming city I have yet to come across.  My heart belongs to London in terms of favorite European cities but Venice is certainly up there.

Brendan and I left Rome at 10:30pm with an arrival time of 5am in Venice. We tried our best to sleep on the train crammed into another six person compartment with every seat filled. The other four people were nice though. The first woman to sit down was an old Italian woman who didn't speak English yet insisted on talking to us hah.  "where are you from?" DC. "its beautiful there?" yes it is. "if no one shows up I'm going to put my feet up on this seat to sleep tonight!"  That one took a while to translate. 

The sun had yet to rise when we had arrived at five so we followed signs for the only McDonald's in Venice but couldn't find it. Fortunately Italians must love their cappuccinos because we were able to find a few cafés that were open.  We sat down in one and had chocolate croissants for breakfast.  I accidentally fell asleep while Brendan did work.  Two hours later we ventured off to find our hostel (it didn't allow check in until 8am).  We were pleasantly surprised at how nice the hostel (Casa Rosetta for Backpackers) was considering it didn't have a website and we couldn't find it anywhere on the internet except for one booking site.  It had an included breakfast, comfortable beds, decent internet, nice bathrooms (although no towels), good location--not bad!  We left and found the Grand Canal just around the corner lined with restaurants.  In our first few hours in Venice there were hardly any people; it actually seemed like a quiet, remote island.  But by 10am the streets were filled with what must have been all 300,000 inhabitants along with just as many tourists!  On the busier "roads", if I can call them that, we found a lot of people (although not so many that you couldn't move), while the side walkways were considerably emptier.

We started out by trying to get lost and simply exploring the many canals of Venice.  For some reason it had never occured to me that Venice literally had no roads or cars and simply consisted of canals with boat traffic and walkways.  You're not even allowed to ride bikes!  I was also surprised when I saw my first Venitian bridge.  It makes complete sense to construct them almost entirely out of stairs (although only some are handicap accessible) since you can make them go higher faster to allow for the boats to go under.  I had simply never seen a bridge made with stairs.  Is anyone else surprised by this??

Nearly every place we found ourselves in, even the deadends, were picturesque.  Sometimes you emerge into a piazza filled with benches and a few trees or a beautiful church or you cross a new bridge with a gondala rounding the corner.  Even at a deadend you might find stairs entering the water where you can see a bridge just down the canal reaching over the oddly tinted green waters.  We took a picture at one of these and the water was so still that the reflection made it difficult to know which way was up in the photo!  Eventually we'd end up on a main walkway with tons of shops.  Say what you will about Oxford Street and Fifth Avenue but I think Venice has some of the best window shopping.  A lot of windows showcase Murano glass shaped into little animals, plates, jewelry, or an entire orchestra.  Or you can find some Italian leather or maybe some intricately decorated masks.  Other shops might be selling pizza for 2 euros a slice or some fresh fruit--they might even be selling it from a boat.

After a few hours we emreged into St. Marco's Square which was bustling with people--I mean a lot of people.  It has to be the size of a few football fields and is surrounded by the most beautiful architecture.  My favorite part, despite the bell tower, palace, and basilica, was probably the live outdoor bands infront of the restaurants which comprised, usually, of a pianist, bassist, and a violinist.  The square led out to the waterfront where you could see other islands and a lot of boat traffic from small gondolas to a massive cruise ship.  We took a step inside the basilica and then continued to wander and shop which pretty much took up the majority of our time.  We also took a water bus along the Grand Canal which, by the way, only has four bridges crossing it (all of which we crossed).  Boom.

I wish I had taken more pictures of Venice at night but by then it had begun to drizzle and Brendan and I were running around looking for this pizza place called "Crazy Pizza" that we had found earlier in the day selling a huge pizza with mushrooms and procutto for only 11.50 euros.  The search reminded Brendan of the How I Met Your Mother Episode where they do the same except we never found our place.  We did, however, find another great one whose name I have sadly forgotten.  Let Brendan know if you find Crazy Pizza because it's killing him hah.  That's all for now!  Thanks for reading : )

Bridge with stairs (left).  The water is so still in some places that the reflections are impeccable!  Did you even notice that the photo (right) is upside-down?

Up close and personal with the fancy Gondolas (left).  The bridge near our hostel over the grand canal (right).

One of the close by islands.

The "coast".

More gondolas.

The Grand Canal

A vegetable/fruit market on a boat.

One of the many pretty parks/squares.

So many people came out by noon!  Piazza San Marco

Gondola parking?

On a pier.