Venice!!
There are a lot of these bridges - don't come to Venice with rolling luggage if you have to walk a bit to your hotel or whatever...so many people struggling.
Gondola!!
Holly and I woke up earlier on Wednesday to get on a ferry but Kayla and Kelly decided to take a later one in. Both days we were in Venice we just wandered around the city. Let me tell you – it’s most definitely a labyrinth. You don’t have to even try to get lost, it just happens. Holly and I went on the idea that we were just going to walk and see what we run in to, it turned out quite well actually. In the places we did stop, we would get out the map and figure out where we were and approximately just what direction we wanted to go in…then we just went. There are so many little side alleys and canals, we ran into a lot of dead ends but we kept truckin. Venice is split up into different areas which have names on the map. Our favorites were San Marco and San Polo (we originally wanted to stand on opposite sides of a bridge and yell to each other, Marco…POLO. It didn’t end up happening). We ran into some cathedrals and Piazza San Marco that had a ton of pigeons. Holly decided to stand with her arms out to see if any pigeons landed on here, she made a friend…and it just sat there for like 3 minutes. The square was pretty impressive but was under a bunch of construction so we didn’t get the whole effect.
Cool cathedral
Piazza San Marco
Holly found a friend
There were SO many shops…everywhere. Murano glass is the big thing in Venice, we didn’t make it over to the island with the factory on it but we saw a ton of glass shops. Holly and I had our first real Italian cannoli (YUMMY) but we were wondering if cannolis were more emphasized as a major Italian pastry when it may actually not be as popular here – only because we had a hard time finding them both days. But both days they were spectacular. Upon our wandering we decided to go sit by the Grand Canal to rest our feet and we found the BEST spot ever. It was a small docking area near some art exhibit thing, but it wasn’t somewhere that many people would go there – we had a few visitors here and there, who were probably going to the art thing first anyway. Legit, we sat there for over an hour waving at people. Yesterday when Kayla came with us (we actually found the spot again!!) she said that she thought there was an American stereotype that we say hi to everyone…we at least supported that one. But it’s SO MUCH FUN!! It literally made us so happy and giddy. People are fun and I’m glad that waving is a universal thing. So great. :)
Dock beside our waving spot!
Holly and I also decided that it would be worth our while to have another (and more so) real Italian meal. I mean one of the ‘sights’ of coming to Italy is to eat right? We have definitely exhausted the bread/cheese/nutella meals, of which we will still be participating in fully, but we came across a restaurant that had a ‘tourist special’ – 3 courses for like 20 euro…not bad at all we thought. We each got separate dishes and shared: First course: lasagna and caprese, Second course: Rosemary roast turkey with mixed salad and ‘fish’ platter with roasted vegetables, Third course: Melon, strawberry and lemon gelato and cream pudding with fruit sauce. YUM. The only thing that was iffy was Holly’s ‘fish platter’. The translation of that part of the menu was not ideal. It ended up being fried calamari, shrimp, jelly fish and some fish thing. Holly struggled a bit (kind of freaked out) because the tentacles were still on the jellyfish, legs still on the shrimp and some sort of fin still on the fish. She was a trooper and ate the shrimp after peeling them and some of the fish. Somehow I managed to eat most of the calamari (it was really tender, that’s the only reason I could) and I actually tried a tiny bit of the jellyfish – didn’t taste like much but was much chewier than the calamari. So that course was interesting but everything else was awesome. The lasagna and caprese were spectacular, turkey was random but good and the gelato was great, as always. Holly ate the cream pudding thing, it was custardy so I didn’t eat much of it (did try it though!). I’m really glad we did that, especially since we didn’t do anything particularly touristy in Venice that we had to pay for (just shopping and the ferry).
Holly, Kayla and I went into Venice again the next day – Kelly decided to chill in Fusina – and we just wandered again. We ran into this awesome mural thing made out of painted eggs. It baffles me how people put this stuff together, one thing I know for sure…I wasn’t meant to be an artist. We also got pastries again, Holly and I again with the cannolis and Kayla got some other cannoli-type thing (not sure what it was called). Like I said, we eventually made it back to the spot Holly and I were in the day before (after shopping a bit) and continued our waving escapades. So much fun.
Pastry happiness
One of the murals
Close-up of the egg murals
Kayla and I :)
Alright, I’m going to cut it off here but I can’t wait to come back already – and I DEFINITELY want to come back here. We had the best time just walking around little side streets and canals really not knowing where we were going at all. At one point Holly and I wandered around the same area for 2 hours – not making it too far, but always going down a different street with shops, we felt like we were getting places…haha. Then later we thought we had actually just walked around the same area for a while but ended up to be a lot further away. My recommendation for Venice (and just about anywhere) is to get lost and see what you run into.
Ciao Venice...for now. Next stop - Amalfi!
Fun Fact: There are 400 licensed gondolas in Venice…apparently it’s really hard to get licensed and there are only 3 or 4 issued each year. Also, there has been a whole lot of sneezing on this trip – something’s in the air.
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