We took a 3 hour train from Rome to Venice, arriving around noon. Venice is exactly what you expect it's going to be, from the second you step out of the train station.
I texted Hillary this picture from the water bus (vaporetto) on the way to the apartment.
When we got off the boat, I took this picture so we'd be able to find the stop again when we needed to leave - the passage from the water to the square is a tiny, narrow alleyway.
Hotels in Venice are expensive, so instead of paying a lot of money for something only okay, we paid a lot of money for an entire nice apartment all to ourselves. This was the courtyard, with our terrace on the third floor.
We dropped our bags and then stopped for lunch at the nearest square. Venice!!!
The churches here are different than I've seen anywhere else - lighter, with less stone.
When we checked into the apartment, the owner - a ninth-generation Venetian - told us, "There is only one Venice." She is definitely right. This city is more tourists than residents these days, but it is an amazing place for wandering. You can very quickly get off the beaten tourist path to see some quiet, beautiful places.
This is our "street" to the apartment. We wondered what the piled up tables were for - Rick Steves (of course!) later told us in an audio tour they're for distributing around as elevated walkways when the city floods. It never rained while we were in Italy, but the following week they had terrible storms and flooding and put the walkways to use!
In this old rickety building across from our apartment, there were some women taking a ballet class one evening. People do still live there and go about normal business.
Our apartment was gorgeous! The lady was really chatty and told us she'd originally bought the building for her kids, but when they grew up none of them wanted to live in Venice. There are no jobs.
The apartment also came with a part-time cat, who appeared on the terrace and wandered in for pets and socializing. He also bit me, but I was asking for it.
When we went out to dinner, Mom put a t-shirt out to dry on the terrace and when we came home it was GONE, despite there being no obvious way for anyone to get up there. We were pretty freaked out and put chairs in front of the door just in case. I started thinking the cat might have taken it - but when I mentioned it to the owner later, she said it was probably a seagull. Apparently they are well known for stealing clothes in Venice!
Mmm, desserts.
We walked down to St. Mark's Square to see the church. There were a lot of people, but it's a huge area so wasn't too bad.
Then we walked over to the area near the Rialto Bridge, where there are lots of shops.
Here we met up with Alessandro, our guide for a bar tour I'd signed up for via, of course, Rick Steves. Along with us were 2 couples from New Jersey. Alessandro took us to three places, where we had great wine and snacks and learned about Venetian culture.
In Italy, everyday wine is called sfuzo wine - you take your own containers to the store and they fill it up for you from a large container of local wine that's only a few days old. No preservatives, no sulfites - so no headache. He kept feeding us more and more of this wine and I woke up with no negative consequences at all, so I guess it's a real thing!
We ended the tour on the Grand Canal under the Rialto Bridge, drinking prosecco. It was a great introduction to the city!
No comments:
Post a Comment