Rivers & Roads

     Originally I had planned to stay in Barcelona the weekend of November 22, but when the opportunity of flying to Venice for the weekend presented itself, how could I say no? I have been to Italy with my family when I was 14, we explored Rome and parts of Tuscany, but going to Venice had always been a dream of mine. The idea of an island that has no cars, over 400 bridges, and endless canals seemed like only something you could see in your dreams. I landed at the Treviso airport which is about a 40 minute bus ride from Venice, but the drive is just one beautiful field after beautiful villa the whole way. Once I got into Venice I was a little bit nervous because I was supposed to meet my travel companion at the train station and I did not have a working phone or any way to contact him but luckily the train station was just over the closest bridge and there he was! We then wandered around to try and find our hostel which was luckily also very close to the train station. It was a pretty small hostel with only one other german couple staying there, but it was nice it almost felt like we had our own little venice apartment!

The first day was really great weather, so we just wandered around the streets with no real destination in mind. We found the Rialto bridge and St. Marks square and then continued on to get lost in the many dead end streets of venice. For dinner we went to a small little restaurant for pizza and beer. After dinner we went back to Rialto to see what it was like at night and then proceeded to get lost again but made it back to our hostel finally about two hours later. The amazing thing about Venice is that not matter what you are going to get lost, there is no map that is helpful enough to prevent you from getting lost, but that is what makes it so fun! Never did I feel scared or worried that we weren't going to find our way, I knew eventually we wound stumble across the street we needed and in the mean time you just get to enjoy the amazing scenery around you.
Unfortunately the weather was not so nice on our second day. It had rained that night and continued on most of the day, making most of venice flood. It was never that much water, the most was probably in St. Marks square with maybe 3-4 inches of water, but it made it a lot harder to walk around. Luckily Venice is prepared for this, and there were little stands selling these slip on rain boots in various neon colors for all of the tourists. These weird boots made it much easier and more fun to walk around the city. We made our way over to the Peggy Guggenheim museum to get out of the rain for a while. The museum used to be Peggy's house located right on the main canal and is filled her private collection which is quite impressive. This night we decided to make our own Italian pasta at the hostel since we were so cold and wet from our day out in the flood.
The third was beautiful and sunny just like the first but we only had a few hours before we had to go to the airport. So we just wandered the streets some more, admiring all the beautiful colors and waterways that line the streets. It was a very quick visit but it was one of my favorite trips. I think being in Venice in sort of the off season was actually quite nice because the streets were not as packed with tourists as they would be in the summer and we could kind of get a feel for what Venice is really like. I still can't really comprehend that people actually live in this floating city, but then again who wouldn't want to live in this fairy-tale waterway?