Aaaaaaaah Venice!

Days 6 , Milan to Venice

Almost everything you’ve heard about Venice is true.

It’s old.  It is crumbling in places.  It is overrun with tourist during the day.  It is expensive.

 

Does it smell?  Only in that everything smells.  It is on a sea, it can smell briny.  It can smell like humanity on a hot summer day.  When we were in a shop looking at belts, we decided it smelled like leather. 

We knew we had our choice of trains to Venice every half an hour up until 9:35 AM.  So we got up, settled our bill and took the 2 Metro Trains to the Centrale Stazione.  We were in time for the 9:05 train.  We got our tickets, validated them and hopped on the train.  I found some great seats, only to find out we had assigned seating.  The nice lady who’s seat we had taken, helped us to find ours, three cars down.

Apparently, Italian couples like to sit across from each other on trains.  We saw evidence of this on several of our train rides.  Looking at our tickets, we were in seats 7A and 8A…Hopefully across from each other and not back to back.  When we got to our seats, someone was in one of ours.  As it turned out, it was another American couple who wanted to sit next to each other, so it all worked out.

We had a great time chatting with them about traveling in Europe for the 2 ½ hour train ride.  And, as always in Italy, the bathrooms on the train were a cultural experience.

But we arrived in Italy, we got our Vaporetto tickets and we headed off down the Grand Canal.

 

So staying 2 nights in Venice was going to be my second hotel challenge.  Like I said, Venice is expensive.

The last time we were in Europe (2012) we sailed into Venice and spent one night on the ship.  I had a very difficult time finding a hotel for just one night, most wanted a 3 or 4 night minimum.  I finally found a real steal on a hotel search website, and grabbed it.  It was a very strange room, that you needed to climb down a ladder to get to.  The room was only big enough to hold the bed and the bathroom was down the hall.  But I loved the price.  And the location, right between San Marco and the Rialto Bridge.

 

This is the actual room we stayed in!

So, this was the hotel I tried first.  The prices were 4 or 5 times what I paid before.

Then I got this notion that I wanted a view of the Grand Canal.

 

The Blog Fodder thought that a view of any old canal should be sufficient for my needs.  After all, the city is full of canals, I should be able to get one for a whole lot cheaper.

Just think, we could have had a view of the Toilet Canal!

 

 

Oh, ye of little faith!

After many days of searching and agonizing, I found a hotel!  They had 2 rooms with views of the Grand Canal!  One room was less than our budget!  AND they were right by the Accademia Bridge.

 

There are only three bridges over the Grand Canal, so being near one is a good thing!

We truly expected to have a peek-a-boo view.  Like if you lean out, and your partner holds your feet, and you swing to the left, maybe, just maybe, you’ll see the canal.

Nope, these are the views we were treated to…..

 

 

The Blog Fodder was duly impressed with my hotel finding skills.  He instantly exclaimed that he would never doubt my abilities again.  He rushed out to buy flowers to scatter at my feet….

Okay, I’m dreaming here, but he was impressed and agreed it was a hotel-finding coup!  And I could be in charge of hotel finding for all the rest of our days!

Oh, wait….walked right into that one!

 

But soon after arriving, we hear noise from the canal, and saw this.

 

Kids learning to row.

 

We also saw a cruise ship sailing by

 

It was great to see all the traffic.  The windows were double paned, so if we closed them, it was silent, but we liked hearing the sounds of the Grand Canal.

 

Now, mind you, a reasonably priced hotel with a view of the Grand Canal in Venice would have to have a down side.  The room was small, but beautiful.  It was more like a long hallway, than a room.  There was a double bed, and room to scoot by on the one side.  I had to sit sideways on the toilet.  It was a beautiful room, but there would be no swinging of dead cats, that’s for sure.

 

 

 

After we checked in, we left the hotel to find lunch.  There was an extremely overpriced place near the hotel, right next to the Canal, so after we consulted the menu, we decided to eat there.  The people watching was great fun and we had a nice lunch.  We had to go into the restaurant to pay and the waiter and barman got into a big old Italian argument.  That is always entertaining, who knows what they were fighting over?

 

 

We then headed off to find Campo San Barnaba.  This was the “library” from the third Indian Jones film.  We were forced to buy some gelato to ponder if this was the right place or not.  It was pretty good gelato, and it was the right place.

 

 

I’m pretty sure the guy in the hat is not Indian Jones

Our Gelato Stand

We went back to the hotel to gather our photography equipment and started to wander to where we were going to meet our tour guide.  On the way there, we looked for a glass shop we visited on our last trip to Venice.  We had purchased some glassed there, and wanted some more.  We went by twice before we recognized the place.  They were still there and the owner was the same.  We looked over the glasses, but decided to come back the next day to purchase.

 

The B.F. took this picture, so we could fine the place easier next time

 

The Biennale was being held in Venice while we were there.  This is a modern art exhibition held every other year.  We passed some interesting pieces for sale.  I can’t post pictures here, as this is a family-friendly site, but we saw some cartoon characters doing things they didn’t do in the original shows!

 

Here are a couple of heavily edited pictures

We also stopped in a small bar to get a snack.  While enjoying our food, a young couple, dressed to the nines, came in.  They were getting ready to go on a gondola ride, and thought some champagne would be nice.  They spent some time debating between a 4 Euro glass of Prosecco or a little bottle of Bellini.  They finally settled on the whole bottle of Prosecco for 15 Euro.  We got quite a chuckle, because we knew they were thinking this gondola ride was SOMETHING WE MUST DO IN VENICE and then they were quibbling over a few dollars when I am sure the gondola ride cost them $100 or more!  Not quite an Ugly American Incident, but close!

 

Speaking of which, you’d never catch me alive on one of those things….so The B.F. got off cheap, this time!

But now it was time to meet our tour guide for the highly anticipated Nighttime Photography tour…the whole reason we drug a tripod all over Italy…..

But that is a story for another day.