According to wiki, Venice or Venezia is connected by 409 bridges and thus has at least 409 photo opportunities. It also feels like it has 40900 masks shops, 40900 restaurants and 40900 daily tourists.
All in attendance: Tobias, Mohammad, Alex and Kristen
Taking the 3+ hour train trip to Milan after work is starting to get a bit monotonous. I did this last week for Poland, I did it for Venice and I will do it for my next trip to Bulgaria as well. Regardless, the Milan train station is still a beautiful sight and the strange Milan smell and sketch have become symbols I associate with a good trip.
After an overnight stay in Milan in a standard overpriced accommodation (Hotel Paganini, 20 euros per night), we took the cheap RE train to Venice (17 euros, one way), arriving shortly before 11.
Wowowowowowowowow. Italy, you are always slightly overprice but always exceptionally beautiful. I can’t get enough of your quaint buildings and streets. Your cathedrals and churches receive full marks for intricate detail and overwhelming beauty. You also score insanely high for tourist density.
We contemplating going to the opera and symphony (each about 20 euros a ticket) but quite frankly, Venice is fun just to walk around. The charming little bridges overlooking the canals do not get old (or at least they didn’t for me on our weekend trip). The streets are a maze but the whole archipelago isn’t very big so it’s not hard to get where you need to go. Some streets are so narrow that two people can hardly pass each other.
It seems like for every tourist in Venice, there is a souvenir stand or shop. Common popular souvenirs sold in Venice aside from the standard postcard/mug/magnet/ashtray are colourful Venetian masks, which range from 2.50 euros to 100+ euros. Even so, each stand or shop carries a few masks that are very different from any of the ones sold elsewhere so it’s always fun to look and to shop around.
If you visit Piazza San Marco/St. Mark’s Square, prepare for a near overdose of beauty and of crowds (unless you are so unfortunate to visit when it’s flooded). We wanted to go up to the balcony of St. Mark’s church but arrived too late in the day. The interior was also very beautiful with grand ceiling, statues and beautiful paintings. There was also a string instrument quartet that played in the plaza at night.
We got a Venice Connected 24 hour pass (18 euros) so we could take a Vaporetto waterbus around since our hostel (Ostello di Venezia, 25 euros a night which is cheap for Venice) wasn’t reachable by walking. Seeing Venice on the waterbuses is very beautiful and I would definitely recommend it unless you want to fork over 80 euros for a gondola ride. They never really checked our tickets – they probably rarely do but that’s just my guess. Regardless, I hate getting hassled by transit authority in any country.
The food? Nothing to write home and parade about. There are as many restaurants in Venice as mask shops so I think it would’ve been worth looking into good restaurants before arriving but our meals were still tasty.
At night we found this strange outdoor plaza where everyone looked 16 and we could get 2 euro drinks. After a few fruity-whats-its, a kind person directed us to a club and after weaving and zigzagging through the streets Tobias actually found the place (to my great surprise). Music was subpar but very loud which balances out to how most nightclubs in Calgary are. Entrance was 10 euros but that included a drink. In most places in Europe, they don’t measure mix drinks with shots so my free-hand poured amaretto sour was pretty much a triple.
We took the night-water bus back to our hostel for 3am. We ate their free breakfast the next morning and then made our way to the train station which was on the opposite side of Venice from our hostel. We missed the first train connection but managed to figure out a route from Venice to Verona and then Verona to Milan thanks to our friends at the Trenitalia booth.
From Milan we took the train to Monza, Monza to Chiasso (Switzerland) and then Chiasso to home. (12 hours travel time).
Things I learned
- Venice has nearly no trees and no grass – which I didn’t notice until we were leaving
- Venice smells a bit - I heard it's sometimes really bad in the summer
- Italian trains are very forgiving to reroute
- A "traffic jam" of pedestrians is even more frustrating than a car one
- I don’t need to hear English to recognize a boisterous group of Americans
Between all 4 of us, we could speak in English, French, German, Arabic, Vietnamese, Afrikaans and a few words in Xhosa
