Venice, Italy

As an activity in Venice, we read that we should wander the narrow streets and canal system of Venice and just ‘get lost’. We’ll that wasn’t too hard! Directions from the train station to our apartment were something along the lines of “follow the narrow street, cross over canal, and repeat another 20 times.” One hot afternoon we were near the train station and wanted to head home for a siesta. We decided to forget looking at the directions and instead just follow the crowd in the right direction towards Piazzo San Marco. After about 30 minutes later we saw a big canal up ahead and were so happy to almost be home for lunch… we walked up to the canal with the anticipation and excitement as if we were walking up and over the horizon of a mountain ridge line only to see the train station directly in front of us. We were back to where we started 30 minutes ago!

We scored a sweet little apartment in Venice that gave us the feeling that we actually lived in the city. There were multiple little art galleries in the neighborhood and a little deli where we bought our dinner supplies and some cured meats that the local old guys were buying.

It is true that Venice is flooded with tourists, and unfortunately a gondola ride is evolved into being completely unromantic. Whenever we saw or heard the singing of a gondola all of the tourists nearby would run over to the nearest bridge to snap a picture and watch not one boat, but a string of 5 or 6 boats go by in a train. Luckily we lived in the heart of the city and early in the morning, and late in the evening (when all of the tourists are in their cruise ships) we found it was possible to get the sense that we were the only people there.

We were surprised by how much we enjoyed Venice, especially since we almost avoided it entirely due to the numerous people who had called it a tourist trap. It was interesting to experience life without cars, trash is picked up by people pushing carts through the streets and where people buy produce from little boats.