Venezia: a land of canals
I think Venice was my favorite place in Italy. It’s a tough decision, but the city was so beautiful and unlike anywhere I’d ever been. I had heard it was beautiful and that there was some great Murano glass gifts to be found, but I had no idea how much I’d love it until I finally visited it. My sister and I traveled to Venice from Florence early Sunday morning (managing to catch our train despite a rumored train strike for the day!).
We arrived at the train station, right on the water, and bought some tickets for the water-bus. That’s what struck me the most. The no cars, no motorized vehicles thing was absolutely amazing. Just boats, waterbuses, water-taxis to get around the city on the canals. So we hopped on the public transportation of Venice aka a boat, and took it a few stops down to the Ca d’Oro dock, which was conveniently just a couple of blocks from our hotel. We rolled our little suitcases down the non-crowded streets to discover we had booked a room in the cutest hotel in Venice! My sister and I fell in love with it! It just had the cutest décor inside, with a little lounge, bar, tea room, and breakfast room. They had complimentary afternoon tea, coffee, and sweet biscuits/ snacks. And breakfast was included in the morning, which was delicious. It was rather reasonably priced as well, so if you ever need a hotel recommendation for Venice, just ask me!
Anyways, after settling in and defrosting a bit, we explored the hotel and had some tea and coffee in the tea room. Then we decided to just wander from the hotel and see what we found, with the hope of grabbing a bite to eat somewhere. In the area closest to the hotel, there were some touristy places and restaurants open and people about, but as we walked further away, it was like a ghost town! There were no signs of life—just quiet, deserted streets. It was so weird and different to be somewhere like that in Italy! But we just kept wandering, crossing back and forth over the random bridges everywhere. And when we thought we were totally lost, we decided to try to head back from where we came, and surprisingly somehow we made it all the way back to our hotel without even breaking out a map! We impressed ourselves.
In our wandering, we managed to pass through the square of the church of Sts. John and Paul, which is one of the major churches in Venice. We also found a little gift shop where we bought some inexpensive glass ink pens (they were quite reasonable because it was a shop away from the real touristy areas). We also stopped by a snack bar for some mixed bruschetta before heading back to the hotel. After mass at the Ss. Apostoli church (right next to our hotel), we went in search for dinner. We stumbled upon a place just a half a block away down a tiny alley that turned out to be a pretty good dinner. I tried some gnocchi and my sister got a seafood pasta dish. We topped it off with a really good white ice cream cake.
After dinner, we caught another waterbus and took it to the St. Mark’s stop. After seeing the popular square, we found our way to the famous Harry’s Bar, where the Bellini cocktail was invented in 1948. Naturally, we both tried these pricy peach champagne concoctions which were delicious. We slowly sipped our Bellini since we could only afford to enjoy one a piece! Then we returned to the cold streets to window shop in the dark at all the gorgeous glass and jewelry stores lining St. Mark’s square. After we were sufficiently tired and cold, we took the longest waterbus ride of our lives when we got on the bus going the wrong direction aka the scenic route back to our hotel stop. Finally we arrived back, exhausted and cold, and were glad to have our cute, warm hotel to retreat to and rest before another long day in Venezia!
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