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Published: August 9th 2008
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The train ride to Venice seemed to take forever. First we had to catch a train to the Italian border and then one to Milan and from there to Venice. Knowing this train might be crowded we reserved seats. The seats were in groups of four, and everyone around us always had a neighbor after the first few stops on the trip. We however, managed to magically be seated in the only seats where no one was assigned to be our neighbor the entire way. It was nice, especially when I noticed some of the other people riding the train that day. One man got on a few stops after us who was easily twice the size of my dad (he resembles the Hispanic version of a 6' Samoan in case you have never met him) and he had only reserved one seat for himself. He tried to squish in next to this poor average sized woman and then got angry when she refused to sit by him. The argument between them lasted a good five minutes - Tim and I had a really hard time not laughing ourselves to death.
We got to Venice and checked into our hotel room,
which was near the station, around dinner time. I asked the receptionist for a good restaurant recommendation and did my best to understand what she said. A lot of the Italian names don't sound quite how you would expect them to be spelled and we never found the place she mentioned. Tim was starving and very grumpy about it and I started to get frustrated. I noticed a place that looked like it could have been the establishment we were searching for; instead it turned out to be a tourist trap. Though the food wasn't bad, it tasted like Olive Garden but slightly better due to lack of greasiness. (I don't like Olive Garden by the way much.) Tim enjoyed his lasagna, however small the serving was but my spaghetti tasted like someone had opened a bottle of Ragu and dumped it on some noodles (Ragu brand sauce is also something I don't care for unless it has been doctored.) In Italy it is customary to order a first and second course and the set of plates that came was terrible! We had pork with a wine sauce and mushrooms. Though the mushrooms were tasty it hardly compensated for the
dry texture and taste of the pork. In the end they wanted 45 Euros for something I could have easily out done at home on a bad cooking day. Frustrated, we wandered around a bit and then returned to the hotel room exhausted from train travel (somehow it seems to wipe us out more than flying.) I wasn't so sure I was going to like Venice at this point and was wondering if tomorrow would be a waste of my time.
We were woken up early the next day by the breakfast room immediately outside our hotel room. Foreseeing this, I attempted to get us a better room but they were all full - or so the lady at the desk claimed. We wanted to be up early to explore the city so this wasn't exactly the end of the world as Tim pointed out. The next day went better after we got to St. Marks square, which was much less impressive than I thought. This might have been the fact that they had scaffolding everywhere because they were noisily cleaning it and it was much smaller than I expected. We decided not to wait in the astronomical line and
Venice
This was part of a glass scuplture on Mirano. If the internet wasnt so slow here I would upload the bigger one. walked on until we found the vapertto station. Here I talked Tim into touring Venice by water. Walking through Venice to reach St. Marks had been a long and winding path that I am sure was not the quickest way there, but instead the way past the most touristy shops. Though this was fun for a while, I did not want to spend the rest of my day that way. We decided to take the long way that ran us through the entire grand canal to a random church and then on a place our guide book had recommended for lunch. This turned out to be an excellent idea! The water was much cooler than the boiling city and I snapped more photos of the beautiful scenery than I had for the entire trip thus far. Saint Georges(a catholic church on Its own island) was alright, but I had seen more impressive in Seattle. They actually had a sign on the door telling people they had to behave 'appropriately' that made Tim and I laugh because we were surprised that anyone would need to be told to behave in a sacred place for any religion.
Lunch was excellent and this
time my spaghetti did not taste like canned Ragu and my meat was not dried out. Tim had salmon ravioli and fried fish and was in seafood heaven. Being moderately allergic to all seafood except crab and tuna, I have wisely decided to avoid it for the most part on this trip to avoid unwanted intestinal discomfort on long train and plane rides. The restaurant itself was small, family run and bright an inviting. It couldn't have been more different from the last Venetian restaurant we ate at. We left an excellent tip and continued on to Mirano, the island in Venice where its world famous glass is made. The glass here was amazing! We wandered in and out of galleries and bought gifts for close family as well as a necklace for me! We grabbed some ice cream and water (we can't seem to drink enough over here) on our way to vapertto stop and went back to our hotel for a while.
Having spent so much money on food and glass jewelry we decided to eat fruit from one of the little stands in the small market outside out hotel and then went out for beers elsewhere in
the city once again using the guide. We topped off the day by eating some sort of iced café ice cream Sunday like treat near the beautiful night time scenery of the Rialto bridge.
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