Venise!

Within the first twenty-four hours of our trip to Italy, we entered a foreign country without going through customs and accidentally stowed away on a cargo ferry. Needless to say, the trip promised to be exciting from the very start. And it was! Italy was amazing and incredibly beautiful! 

When we arrived in Bologna, we took a bus to the train station, then walked to our hotel from there. We were upgraded to the "Flower Suite," in which the wallpaper could only be described as "aggressively bad." It was by far the nicest hotel we stayed in though. Such a clean bathroom! The next morning, we left early to take a two-hour train to Venice!

Right when you walk out of the train station at Venice, you see the Canal Grande! It's true; in the main part of Venice, there are no cars, only boats. The taxis are motorboats, the buses are ferries, etc. We first checked out two of the cool bridges by the train station, and a huge church that was right next to it. Then, we turned to my Google Maps directions to get to our hotel. Since it was on the island of Lido de Venezia, instead of the main Venezia island, we knew we had to take a ferry to get to it. There were some right outside of the train station, but Google told us to go down the street to the right, so we figured we needed a different one. 


After walking for like 40 minutes down a long road leading far away from the main down part of Venice to the middle of a bunch of ports, we finally found some signs saying "ferry" and "Lido," as well as a few other confused tourists. After wandering through a bunch of parking lots, we finally found some toll booths selling ferry tickets to cars. However, no ticket booths for people. Troubling... We asked some Italian guy "Lido? Ferry?" And he said something in Italian that sounded like "Are you looking for the ferry?" "Si, si!" He pointed to one of the boats, so we walked over to that one, looking confused. A guy working on it asked us where we wanted to go in broken English. "Si, si Lido! Go ahead, go ahead!" And he pointed us up to the top level of the boat. So we assumed we would buy tickets on board. When no one ever came around, and the supposedly 8-minute ferry ride was approaching half an hour, we figured we were on the wrong one. Turns out, it was a ferry just for cars and trucks bringing supplies to Lido! When we finally got there, we just walked off, and no one even looked at us. And that's how we got a free ferry ride. (The rest of the time we used the actual, more legal ferry though.)


After checking into the hotel, we grabbed some lunch and our first gelato! Suffice it to say, I ate an obscene amount of gelato during our four days in Italy. SO GOOD. And it's really cheap in Italy too! A small that would be like 3.50€ in Bordeaux was as little as 1€ in Italy. The pizza and pasta were also amazing!

 Next, we took the actual passenger ferry back over to Venezia to see Piazza San Marco. It was so pretty! It's a huge plaza with a church, the Basilica di San Marco, and a brick bell tower. There are also a lot of fancy restaurants there, with bands playing. Besides all the tourists, it felt very Italian! The basilica was beautiful. I though churches in France were amazing, and they're the same in Italy but bigger. Every church we went to was massive, even the less famous ones.

Then we walked around a lot, checking out all the canals. Every few blocks, there's another bridge to go over a canal. I couldn't stop taking pictures! Every single canal was beautiful! The water actually looks really clean too, and there's almost no litter in it. We saw a lot of gondolas too! Even singing gondoliers! It looks like the quality of your gondolier can really vary though; some of them were laughing and singing like Italian opera and stuff; another one we saw was smoking, listening to ear buds, and then answering his phone, all while paddling the gondola. They do all wear the striped shirt uniform though! Some of them even have the hats! Unfortunately, gondola rides are like 80€ for half an hour, so we opted not to go on one.

The next morning, we slept in late since we knew we wouldn't get a lot of sleep that night on the train. Then, we went and got brunch and gelato. So essentially, I even had gelato for breakfast! 


We went back to the main island, taking the ferry all the way to the Rialto bridge. Even though it's like the Venetian equivalent of a bus ride, the ferry route is beautiful! It goes down the Canal Grande, which is the main canal through downtown Venice, so you see all these beautiful buildings and fancy hotels and museums along the sides.

The Rialto Bridge was really cool. It's more like a street that continues across the canal. On either side is a pedestrian area, but the covered part in the middle is all tourist shops, just like a regular street! The bridge itself was really pretty, and we stopped for a long time at the top to take in the view of the canal. 


The rest of the day, we walked around, enjoying the streets and different piazzas of Venice. We saw some more amazing churches, like the Basilica di Santa Maria Gloriosa, and got some souvenirs. We ended with pizza and gelato (basically every other meal for us), and then hung out at the train station until it was time for us to head to Rome!

À bientôt! With stories from Rome!


(Also, Venice in English, is Venise in French, is Venezia in Italian. Confusing, non?)