Venice:

The Grand Canal. Venice.

So, our journey to Venice was not a short one. All in all, it took us about 10 hours and that was without waiting in between trains. It was go, go, go. Javier has taken on the role of travel agent and navigator. The former, he is very good at, while the latter of which, we can both admit, isn’t really his strong point. Normally, we don’t have a problem. If he’s unsure of a direction, we both look at the map and figure it out together. So, when we arrived in Venice at night, we did what we normally do, follow Javier’s directions… This was bad. Our hotel was not close to the train

Venice gondolas

station. Now, to be fair, Javier warned me that it was going to be tricky. To be fair again, I asked if there was a bus or something that we could take to make the whole thing easier. Javier told me that there are no buses, the streets are too small, bridges, etc. Well friends, Venice does have buses, except they don’t run on land, they float. We should’ve taken a water bus, which would have taken us about 10 minutes, or we could have walked, but taken the Street Nuova, the longest straight street, which would have

San Marco Square.

taken us about 20 minutes to walk, and less confusing. I wish I could show you the path Javier mapped out on his phone. It was ridiculous. It was the shortest in distance, but we have never been there before, don’t understand the signs, and some of the walkways are flat out not labeled, it took us: an hour and a half walking, several backtracked blocks, asking for help, which was no help, me trying to follow his map, and getting lost again, one frustrated argument, and finally resorted to following the herd of people moving in our general direction, which surprisingly worked. Once we crossed the Rialto Bridge, Javier was able to navigate us the final few blocks to our hotel. By the time we arrived, we were hungry and tired. Not a good way to start. There was a soccer game that night, so after a quick dinner, we asked the waiter for a bar that would be showing the game. He gave us vague directions to a sports bar, so we went ahead and ventured off in that direction. Once we realized we had no idea where we were going, we gave up and simply wandered until we found something. We found an Irish pub where we grabbed a couple seats and beers, and finally relaxed after a long day.

Jackie and her waterproof boots.

The next morning, we wandered around the city. We were staying next to San Marco square, so we decided to walk over. When we arrived, the square was flooded! There was a little strip down the middle, like a sandbar, that was higher than the rest, and therefore, dry. Our boots are waterproof, so we waded in the water as far as we could until it was just about to spill over. We saw many people who had rolled up their pants and were walking through barefoot, and others who had purchased plastic knee-high covers to put over their shoes and pants so that they too, could walk through the water. Over the years, with Venice sinking, and global warming raising the water level, when high tide comes, the water is now high enough to enter the stores. Many of the shops have these removable metal barriers in front of their doors to keep their shops dry during high tide. So, if you want to go into the shop, you have to step over a knee-high metal plate. As we walked

Cathedral. high tide flood.

around the square, we noticed at the far end, in front of the cathedral, the city had set up a walkway for the people. When it’s high tide, the city builds knee-high walkways throughout the major pedestrian traffic sections of the city. These walkways look like low folding tables, about two persons wide, and all the people are walking single-file, trying to get from point A to B. Many people get impatient and look like they’re going to jump off and free themselves, but none do 🙂 Even the cathedral has these walkways inside, because yes, even it gets

reflexion. nice

flooded. Without really noticing the water, Javier and I did some window shopping along the flooded areas and spent some time inside the cathedral. When we exited and went back to the middle of the square, the water was almost completely gone. Guess high tide was over. We could see it draining from little holes all over the ground. From these holes, the water comes in and goes out. 

We were suffering from another, “please God, no more pasta!” episode, so we found our saving grace, Hard Rock Cafe, where we ordered nachos and chicken wings. Thank you.

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Gondola

After this, we continued to wander around and took pictures both day and night, contemplated on taking a gondola ride, after all, when in Venice…but in the end, didn’t really feel like it. 

The next day, we took, what was quite possibly our worst free walking tour, but it’s free-ish, so I guess we can’t complain too much. She kept giving us her opinions on things, and giving us tips on travel, eating, tours, etc., which is all good and fine, but we take these tours to learn about the history of a place, not how to read the water bus schedule. So, after a 4-hour, yes, a 4-HOUR WALKING TOUR!, she had us chasing her to a restaurant where we could buy cichetti (Venetian tapas). Now, to be fair, we did learn some interesting things about Venice, like it’s built on tree logs. Yes, the whole place is built on wooden piles that were packed together and stuck into the

Stairs made out of books. cool!

swamp below. Limestone is placed on top of the piles, and on top of the limestone, brick or stone, which is why the whole place is sinking at different rates. The city doesn’t want to build any more bridges because the ground is constantly moving, so in answer to this, they have gondolas that simply go back and forth across the canal as a sort of taxi. The locals take these gondolas all the time. It only costs 2 euro and can save someone up to 30 minuntes of walking to the nearest bridge. My favorite part of the tour was this really cool bookshop. The

Floodproof Bookstore

shop itself is really cluttered and messy, but the cool part about this place is that they have placed all of the books and stuff in boats, bathtubs, and other things that float, after loads of books were ruined during a huge flood. Some of the ruined books are used as blocks to raise tables and bathtubs, and they have created a staircase of ruined books outside, where you can glance over the wall into the canal below. We ended the tour at the location where people were publicly executed. When the day came for the prisoners to be put to death,

Doge’s Palace. Jackie attempting to pass.

they were given one last chance to save themselves. The Doge’s Palace was built with these columns along the side creating a covered walkway between the building and the columns. It is possible to walk around all of these columns without stepping off the Palace foundation with the exception of one. By mistake, one of the columns was built wider than the rest. Because of this, it is impossible to step around the front of the column without stepping on to the street. The Doge came up with a brilliant idea to give the prisoner one last shred of hope by telling him that he could walk away a free man if he could move from one side of the column to the other without touching the street. It’s impossible, and today the marble actually slopes toward the ground, which makes it that much more impossible. A few of us tried. We all failed.

Santa Maria della Salute. Venice. View from Academia bridge.

The next day we took another free walking tour, which covered the second half of the island. This guide was much better, and gave us a good history of Venice. We walked into this ancient church turned hospital, walked across the Academia bridge, the oldest wooden bridge in Europe, and we saw this supposedly haunted house, or at least a bad luck house. Apparently everyone who lives there dies shortly thereafter, usually by some horrible accident. Again, we contemplated a gondola ride, and again, we

Rialto Bridge.

were just not that interested. We would be taking the water bus the next day when we left, and that would have to suffice for our, “seeing Venice from the water” experience. I would like to mention that it only took us 15 minutes to get back to the train station via water bus. 🙂 Live and learn.

To see more pictures of Venice, click HERE.