A Brief Stop in Venice

Venice—Many people will say that it is one of the most beautiful cities in Europe. I’d like to get some of that stuff they are smoking because I certainly didn’t see what they were seeing. I guess most of these folks must have visited the coffee shops in Amsterdam before coming to Venice. To be fair, we were only in Venice for the day, so I guess we missed most of the beauty these folks must have seen.
Venice is a very unique city built on 118 islands in the swampy marshes of the Adriatic Sea. Some fun facts include 150 canals, 409 bridges, and over 3,000 alleyways. There is actually much more land in Venice than I originally believed.
For those of you who are familiar with our traveling companion Marco, you will know that he was named after the world explorer, Marco Polo. Marco Polo was originally from Venice, so this was a must stop on our itinerary. In fact, the airport is called the Marco Polo International Airport. No photo op here because we arrived in Venice via train from Verona. In fact, we arrive in Venice in the late morning of the 29th of August. Our stay here would be for a few short hours before we head off to Budapest, Hungary.
We arrive at the train station and step outside to figure out our game plan for the day. We take a seat on the steps overlooking the Grand Canal and get our first glimpse of this city with a high concentration of tourists. Venice gets its share of tourist each year. I have read that somewhere between 10 and 15 million people visit this city each year. The numbers vary depending on which propaganda you are reading.

We scope out the “left luggage” office and determine to leave the backpacks and only go with our daypacks as we trek around town. The cost is reasonable, but I have some doubts about leaving our packs in the left luggage office. I mean these packs contain all of our worldly possessions for the next 9 months. We strap our “food bag” onto Lynne’s pack to reduce the per bag charge and leave the bags. We get our receipt and hit the streets.

We cross the Ponte degli Scalzi Bridge which is one of three bridges that span the Grand Canal. The bridge measures about 20 feet high and nearly 65 feet long. The bridge has stairs which serves as a major form of entertainment for us. Many of the tourist arriving via train cross this bridge to get to their hotels. Standing on the bridge, we hear the familiar thump, thump, thump, thump of wheeled suitcases being dragged up and down these stairs. We have seen this sight at nearly every destination and are grateful that we opted to go the backpacking route. It is sad, but comical when a suitcase goes out of balance and turns on its side going down steps. This is actually a pretty common sight. Oh by the way, I recently was run over by a runaway suitcase going down an escalator. Hey, it was only a flesh wound, but the owner had his pride damaged much more than I was.
Ok, back to the story. We proceed through the narrow alleys lined with tourist shops and decide it was time to get a bite to eat. We stop by a little square and sit in an outdoor café. We both get pasta and enjoy the waves of tourists and tour groups as they pass by.
We navigate through the alleyways, well; they aren’t really streets, but a whole series of alleyways. As we snake our way through town, I can’t help but to notice just how beautiful this city must have been at one time. It appeared to me that a majority of Venetians have little pride in their city or homes. It has an overall rundown and neglected appearance to it. I guess I just expected some much more from this historical city. Most of the buildings are in desperate need of a paint job and just a good helping of TLC. I will say that most of the “tourist” areas are well maintained and clean. You can spot the tourist areas from all of the “gift shops” lining the streets. They actually have natural routes through the city to guide tourist in the right direction. These routes are marked by the over abundance of gift shops. Getting lost in Venice is a rather simple task. Lynne and I enjoy trekking off the beaten track to scope out the real Venice. We see locals in their natural environment. The guys are busy moving things up and down the side canals on their boats. We even see a guy loading a wide-screen TV onto a small boat. Ladies are busy hanging laundry out to dry. The laundry is hung from balconies and the drapes across the street. We sit by the Grand Canal and observe a well dressed young lady anxiously waiting for something or someone. She looks up the canal, then down the canal and repeats this process for about 15 minutes. In a short while, a young man pulls up to the dock in a boat and takes her away. It appears that perhaps they were going out on a date. Now that was a pretty cool sight to see. On a side canal, we watch a local resurfacing a gondola. He is busy sanding the surface and appears to be enjoying what he does.

People and goods are moved around the city by boat. There are no vehicles in Venice. Once a boat goes as far as it can by water, goods are then loaded onto a hand cart to its final destination. Public transportation is in the form of water taxis. These are huge boats that take people around the city via the Grand Canal. When anyone things of Venice, the one thing that jumps into our mind is the gondola. Oh yes, a romantic gondola ride through the canals is at the top of most tourists list when visiting Venice. After checking this out, we scratched our plans to take a gondola ride. A 45 minute gondola ride will set you back around $150 and this was not in our budget.
Signs are posted around the city stating that feeding pigeons is prohibited and comes with a pretty hefty fine. There is only one place to legally feed pigeons in this city. San Marco Square is one of the main focal points for tourists. I learn that the government limited the number of licenses for vendors selling bird seed to feed the pigeons in the square. These licenses have been handed down from generation to generation. An interesting tidbit of information.
Venice is host to the Venice International Film Festival, we will miss this event by just a few short days. Venice is also known for its elaborate Carnival events. You see evidence of this through the hundreds of tourist shops selling Carnival masks and costumes. Some of these masks and costumes are unbelievable and have a price to go along with it.
We make our way through tourist alley on our way back to the train station. We stop and get a bite to eat before we board our overnight train to Budapest. We head back to the left luggage office to claim our bags and all is well. I am relieved to see the use of this service was incident free. We still have about an hour to kill so we sit on the steps of the train station and engage in some great people watching.
The time comes when we can board the train. We have booked a reservation on an overnight train to Budapest, Hungary. We have a sleeper car which has fold down beds. As we approach the train, the rail attendant asks for our tickets. Lynne gives him our reservation and the Eurail pass. He shows us to our cabin and keeps the ticket and heads down to his room. I follow him down the hall and ask for our tickets. He says he keeps the tickets until the morning. We do not have a warm fuzzy about this deal at all. He says “this is normal”. Well, we get settled into our cabin and the train begins to roll to our next adventure—Budapest.
As you may be able to tell from this post, I did not take many photos of our brief stop in Venice. I was just not impressed with the city enough to take many photos. Sorry Anna, but I didn’t get any photos of Lynne on this post. Again, our visit was short, so we did not get the opportunity to explore this city and find some of its hidden gems.

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