Following the Dream

Christian October 11th, 2008

The journey from Naples to Venice was very long even when spent in a nice first class seat on the train (only Eurail ticket we could buy, what a shame). The good news was that once we arrived at the Venice train station our hotel was only a few short blocks away.  We were quickly checked in and then shown to our room, which turned out to be down a maze of corridors, steps, and so many turns you weren’t quite sure what direction you were headed.    It was very odd, the walk to the hotel was actually shorter than the walk to our room.  It was almost like some sort of illusion, since the hotel looked very small and unassuming from the street.  Our room was small and had some ruby red wallpaper, but was nice enough at first glance.  Our first priority, as usual, was to find a grocery store since we had limited food supplies for the 9 hour train ride it took us to get there.  We were told there was one only a few blocks past the train station in a square. So we make it to the square and walk the whole way around it to find no grocery store. Now we are hungry and frustrated so we stop at an info booth who directs down to the waterfront and around a corner. I wouldn’t say this is “in the square where the buses stop” as the front desk told us. As we were later to learn, this was only a preview of being lost in Venice.  One of the things that we were getting used to in Italy was the grocery stores.  We thought that back home “after work” rush at grocery stores were bad until stepping foot into a grocery store in Italy.  Here, most of them are tiny with small winding isles with an overabundance of extra large carts.  As usual the store was very busy and by the time you left you felt like you had just played bumper  boats for the losing team for the last half hour, trying to dodge the blows from the carts only to have another one run into you from another angle. We settled on our usual ham and cheese sandwiches for dinner with some chocolate cookies for dessert. We were pretty tired and spent the night in watching some TV and going to sleep early. What we didn’t know was that at night it gets really cold, so our room which was already pretty chilly, became downright frigid at night.  Luckily there was a blanket in the closet that helped a bit.

After spending a restless night freezing we took hot showers and headed out to explore our one and only day in Venice. Before I continue, let me point out a few “interesting” things about our room.  I am not complaining for the price, but this made our stay in the room a little more exciting.  The bathroom door simply does not fit the doorframe, so you can never actually shut it, leaving it to fly open on a whim.  The other is the shower that was one of the ones you can pull down to spray where needed, this was great.  Save for the fact that the holder was broken, so the shower piece sat limp spraying water directly at the wall.  This would not be so much a problem as you could simply hold it, however our shower was a part of the bathroom floor with about an inch protecting the surge of water from escaping.  We found that using it in this manner left a lake in the bathroom covering the floor from the toilet to the sink.  Luckily, we had a beautiful day to explore and quickly made our way through the streets to the famous Piazza San Marco. It was impressive how easily we made our way there.  The square was packed with tourists everywhere and tons of tour groups clogging the way for other people. We had heard they removed the bird feeders and that the birds where no longer around the famous square but we saw lots of people had brought their own snacks to feed the birds. So I saw someone had dropped a whole shortbread waffer on the ground and picked it up to feed the birds. They would come over and eat out of our hands and perch on your shoulders and arms.  It actually turned out to be good fun.

We were a little disappointed that much of the square was covered with scaffolding for construction projects which made for not so great photos. We made our way throught the crowds to the water and enjoyed a stroll through many shops and vendors selling souvenirs.  It was very nice next to the water.

We decided to make our way back to the hotel slowly stopping to take some photos. Well we quickly learned that Venice really is a maze of streets. It would not be as easy to get back as to get there.  Everytime we thought we were going the right way we would turn a corner and end up exactly where we started. I laughed about it, enjoying all of the out of the way places that we saw.  We were able to see the more residential places in Venice, which was a lot nicer to walk around than the tourist filled streets that lead to San Marco Piazza.  We finally gave in to our hunger and ate a gelato for a quick snack. After being lost for at least an hour we made our way the whole back to the Piazza and followed the other tourists to the Grand Canal from where we could find our way back to the hotel for some lunch.  We did get lost again on the way back, but this is half the fun with Venice.  You can’t set yourself a time limit if exploring on your own.  You simply pick out a few things you want to see, and spend the day trying to find them.  We found tons of beautiful places that were out of the way, with not a single tourist in sight.  Not wanting to eat too much before another long travel day we opted for a small self-service cafe which served up huge pasta portions for only $7.00. The kicker was if you wanted a drink it would cost as much as the food, so we went without (not entirely true, Casey somehow managed to sneek in an open can of soda in her purse). Back at the hotel we took a power nap and asked if we could turn our heat on at night. The ever unhelpful front desk told us the city regulates when the heat can be turned on and they hadn’t been given the okay to turn it on yet. We could get an extra blanket if we wanted. So while the daytime temperatures where in the 70’s, it was a damp 40 at night thanks to all the water.

The rest of the day was uneventful, we got some snacks for the train the next day and explored a little around the area our hotel was in until dark where we took some pictures of the beautiful city at night. Since it was our last day in Italy we splurged and got gelato one last time. We went for the big 2 scoops cone that everybody always seems to have and enjoyed.  Once back at our hotel took some hot showers, to help warm up the room, and got packed up. What we didn’t know was that we had a little visitor in our room. As we watched some TV a bug kept flying around us and bothering us, what we didn’t realize was that once asleep the little bug was a blood thirsty vampire who ate us alive during the night. You could hear it flying past you as you slept so about halfway throught the night we realized what was happening and had to spend the rest of the night with the sheet up over your head and tucked securely around your body until you looked like a mummy to keep the little vampire away. It was quite funny but not so much fun when you where trying to get a good nights sleep in the already cold room.  We were covered in itchy bug bites that would hang around for a week, reminding us of Venice.  I think I got it worse, since I pulled my head out from under the sheets at one point during the night.  I was left with loads of bug bites on my face, ear, and neck. 

We enjoyed Venice a lot. It is a beautiful city unlike anywhere else in the world. We felt we could see most everything in the one day we were there and were not disappointed by our short stay. We found that spending the extra $30 a night to stay central to the train station was well worth it.  This was we did not have to worry about taking a bus or ferry everytime we wanted to go into Venice.  Venice is the most expensive city to visit in Italy but we found some good deals on food and gelato. After a couple weeks spent in Italy we were very excited to visit Switzerland and see the beautiful countryside.

• Italy
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