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Published: August 6th 2008
The Grand Canal
The motorway of Venice, full of water-busses, motorboats and gondalas. Driving on the water is even more erratic than on land...I was really looking forward to reaching Italy as having visited Florence before I knew that the food should be fantastic - it's nice to be able to look at a menu and instantly recognise all of the contents, and know that it's likely to be even better than in the UK.
I was also particularly looking forward to Venice as it was a place which I'd always wanted to go to. Even after yet another overnight train (this was a bit of a noisy one... ) I was not dissappointed.
Luckily we managed to find a fantastic hotel through laterooms.com in the lovely district of San Polo. It take a bit of finding though... If you can imagine us carrying the backpacks in the morning sun for 3 hours visiting 3-4 different streets with the same name, and then still not finding it and having to return to the train station to stand in a tourist information queue for 40 mins, you can see how good it must be for me to still think it was fantastic!!! For about 50 euros we got a room with air conditioning in the centre of Venice and were able to see
the grand canal from our window... Granted it was a small view, but it was there! My advice, always ask tourist information to point your hotel out on a map for you, as half the streets on the map aren't named and almost of all of them are repeated!!!!
Anyway, even during the hotel hunt you could see that Venice is simply stunning. We sat on a step by a canal staring at the map for the umpteenth time and couldn't help but be a bit excited by Gondolas going past and seeing fairly large fish swimming about the steps. The weather being gorgeous (if a little on the hot side!) probably helped but it is exactly how you'd imagine it - and a bit better, especially if you go down the numerous little allies and explore.
We didn't go into many of the big tourist attractions, it was simply too hot to queue (the place was heaving with tourists!) and anyway all we really wanted to see was the scenery. We did however go into a few smaller chapels to escape the heat and the paintings in them were wonderful, and somehow better as there were so
View from San Marco
The Basilica di San Marco, with extravagent stonework and decorations few people around to look at them!
We did see the main sights though as you'll see from the photos. San Marco square with the Campanile is lovely if a bit touristy, and the Rialto bridge and market were interesting to take a look at. Venice does tourist tat incredibly well, I have never seen as many gaudy masks and glass products! There were hundreds of small shops all selling the same thing, how do they survive?
Speaking of glass products we'd got hold of a river ferry pass after our heroic attempts walking to find the hotel and decided to use it to go and visit the islands around Venice - one of which, Murano, does glass blowing. But that's about it and so we didn't stay long. Instead we hopped over to Lido and went and had a paddle in the sea at the beach resort. Very bizarre after spending quite a bit of time enclosed in small alleys by canals!
The best bit had to be all the bridges and reflections on the buildings. Some of the grand canal palaces are fairly gaudy but the streets where people actually live and have businesses on
are reassuringly more homely. And having tried a little taverna for lunch I would definitely recommend it.
After a lovely 24 hours it was time to say good bye Venice and hello Rome - but I will definitely remember Venice as one of my favourite destinations. Only a little behind Norway.
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