Venice, Day 1

Tuesday, 3 July 2012

Tuesday morning came way too early. Our flight was at 7:00 and we wanted to be there by 5:45, so we had to leave the hotel by 5:15, which meant I had to wake up at 4:00. After walking all over Barcelona for two solid days, I was exhausted, so the last thing I wanted to do was to get up that early. But it was a necessary evil if I wanted to get to Venice. Luckily, the flight was nearly two hours, so I was able to get in a decent nap. Because our flight was so early, we arrived at the hotel way before check in time. But the people were nice and let us drop off our luggage so that we could go into the city.

Technically, where we’re staying isn’t even in Venice. It’s in the town over, called Mestre. But the commute into the city isn’t that bad – it’s only twenty or so minutes by bus. So we boarded the bus and rode into the actual city of Venice.

Vaporetto Ride

One of the top things on my list was a ride down the Grand Canal. There are riverboats that will take you on a “cruise” down the canal and tell you what you’re looking at, but they are very expensive. However, when I was researching Venice, I found a way to finesse the system. Instead of paying through the nose for a guided river tour, you can pay €7 for a ride on a vaporetto, which is a waterbus. The #1 vaporetto runs very slowly, so it’s basically a river cruise, you just don’t get the commentary. We decided that we didn’t really care if we knew what the buildings were or not, so we opted for the cheap way. It may have been cheap, but it was really cool. The Grand Canal is the major waterway of the city, so it is clogged with all kinds of boats, from gondolas to vaparettos to water taxis to delivery boats. I really enjoyed getting to see the gondolas up close because they are something I’ve only seen in movies. It was also really neat getting to see how the water goes right up to the front of some of the buildings. To get to the door, a person has to jump from a boat a little pier in front of the building or straight into the door of the building.

Piazza San Marco

The vaporetto dropped us at San Marco and we followed the crowd to the Piazza San Marco. Judging by the amount of people crammed into the piazza, it is definitely one of the main tourist attractions in Venice. This is because three of the big things to do in Venice (the Basilica San Marco, the Ducal Palace, and the Torre dell’Orologico) are all right there together in the piazza. By this time, it was lunchtime, and we were starving, so we decided to skip those attractions for the moment being and head straight for food. However, because the piazza is such a big tourist area, everything there is really expensive. So we headed down into a side street, where we found a place with reasonably priced food. Of course, because I’m in Italy, I ordered pasta.

Getting lost can be pretty

After lunch, we decided we should head back to the hotel so we could check-in and put our luggage in our rooms. However, that was easier said than done. We had already paid for a vaporetto to get down to San Marco, and we really didn’t want to pay to get back, so we decided to walk back to the bus stop. The walk was definitely an adventure. Because of all the canals intersecting it, Venice is a really hard city to navigate, especially if you’re walking everywhere. On top of that, the map that we had didn’t have many street names on it, so we were left to just wander in the general direction of where we thought we were supposed to be going. We knew that we had to cross the Grand Canal to get to the correct island, but we didn’t know where a bridge was to cross it. According to our map, it was near a big piazza, so we followed the street signs to that piazza. However, when we got there, there was no bridge to be found. So we continued to wander for a while until we finally happened to come across the bridge we were looking for. After that, we didn’t think it was going to be too hard to get back because there were signs pointing us in the direction of the piazza where the busses stop. Once again, we were wrong. We followed the signs, but still ended up lost. Fortunately, a nice man took pity upon us when he saw us studying our maps. In very broken English and hand signs, he directed us to the place where we needed to be.

During all of these adventures, I learned one very interesting detail about Italian men. They are intrigued by my blonde hair. I guess it’s because Italians are olive-skinned and dark headed, so they’re not used to people with lighter hair. But it’s not just that they’re intrigued by it; they stare. And they don’t try to hide it. They blatantly stare. I should probably find it uncomfortable, but I actually think it’s pretty funny. For instance, we were walking down a tiny alleyway while we were lost and this guy was coming from the opposite direction pulling a big trolley worth of boxes behind him. I saw that he was staring at me, but didn’t think much of it. But he kept staring. And staring. He got so distracted by my hair that he accidentally ran his load of deliveries into the wall. I just think it’s funny that some as inconsequential as hair color can distract them so much.

After all the adventures of getting lost in Venice, we finally found the right place and got on the bus to go back to the hotel. Because we gotten up so early and were tired from both that and walking around so much, we decided to take a nap before heading back into the city for the evening. However, our little nap turned into a four hour nap. I didn’t wake up until 8:00! By then, we decided that it was too late to go back into Venice, so we just walked around the corner to a restaurant near the hotel. I had pasta again – I know I’m going to gain weight on this trip because all I’ve been eating is carbs, not to mention gelato!