"The Floating City"

This weekend I went on my first real adventure, to the beautiful “floating city” of Venice. It is the city of water, masks and blown glass masterpieces. The term marionette was coined there and the city is famous for its grand Carnival! My friend Hannah has wanted to go to Venice for a while now and it seemed like the perfect weekend for me to go with her. So we walked to the train station Wednesday and tried to buy tickets from the automated ticket machine. The only tickets we could find were around 80 bucks round trip and that price was just over what we wanted to spend. We decided to wait in line to speak with a human to make sure there was no cheaper way to Venice. That was “good decision” number one of I don’t know how many over the course of the next 3 days! We ended up getting round trip tickets to Venice for 50 some Euros all together! ... What is the catch you ask? We had to take 3 different trains to get there but we didn’t mind one bit!

My class got out at 2:45 Thursday and we had a 3:08 departure from Florence SMN (Santa Maria Novella Train Station). We asked some nice Italian girl how exactly we were supposed to validate our ticket and we hoped on the train. The transfer from one train to a next was a breeze and before we knew it 3 hours had gone by and we were waiting in Bologna for our last train to Venice. We had about a 45-minuet layover in Bologna so we found the platform listed on the departure screen and waited for the “free bathroom”, aka our train to arrive. The minuets ticked by and we started to wonder were our train was. Hannah checked the screen with 2 minuets till our scheduled departure and notice that our train had moved to track number 9! We booked it down the stairs and up to the next platform just in time to jump on our train, find two seats and have the doors close behind us. We sat and looked at each other dumbfounded at what had just transpired! We had no idea that trains switched tracks once they had been listed on the departure screen and we never thought to double check. We learned a valuable lesson and luckily we learned it the easy way… Always, triple check the track number of your train.

We stepped off the train in Venice still thankful we hadn’t missed our last connection and when we came down the train station stairs to the waters edge we were overjoyed out how pretty it all was! We took a seat on the steps and called the hostel for directions. That was unsuccessful; needless to say the person who answered the phone spoke less then satisfactory English so we resorted to “Plan B”. “Plan B”, was to ask the cute guy behind the counter which way to go. ;-) This plan ended up being our best friend and most effective means of getting around that weekend! After asking a number of really nice, helpful Italians how to get to Fucina along the way we made it to our hostel. We even met the COOLEST couple on the bus rid there! Their names were Claudia and Greg and they were from Glasgow and that wasn’t the last we would see of them that weekend!

Some cute Cuban guy checked us into our camper/hostel and after an AMAZING pizza margarita and french fries with Italians version of ketchup, (which tastes more like cocktail sauce), we climbed into our slightly damp beds and went to sleep. 

Our day started with a small breakfast at the hostel and a ferry ride to the main island of Venice. The weather wasn’t ideal but we made the best of it. We walked in and out of stunning churches and visited the Piazza San Marco where we had a mini photo shoot, took some famous bird pictures and went to the top of the bell tower. We did a TON of walking and a lot of window-shopping. I tired on maybe a few hundred Venetian masks and we drooled over the beautiful glass chandlers and figurines most of the day. Our night ended with a little play about the Story of Venice, It was really neat to learn about the history a bit and the production was fantastic! I was especially nice to sit down for an hour and rest my feet. We wandered around the quiet and creepy streets of Venice, “asking” our way, back to the bus deposit where we eventually ran into our Scottish friends again! (Like i said before, simply asking how to get somewhere is SO much easier then reading a map yourself!) We figured out that we would have to wait 45 minuets for the next bus, so I grabbed some McDonalds and we chatted with our new friends while we waited! We couldn’t wait to get back to the hostel for some pizza Margarita dinner!! When we go back to Camping Fusina we found the pizzeria had close 35 minutes early!  I luckily had grabbed some food at the bus stop before that but Hannah hadn’t eaten since breakfast! There was nothing open at 10:30 and now were to go and eat! We were at a loss and really had no options until on our way to the bathroom we ran into Claudia again she was carrying a bag of left over food!! Being the wonderful gal she is she shared more then half what she got from the bar tender for free and took the rest back for her and her boy friend.

Day two in Venice was beautiful! We ate at a little restaurant along the water (well actually we sat along side a French couple, who were seated along side the river… lol) but we had scoped the place out the day before and decided it was just right for us! For desert we went to this cute little gelatoria called Mela Verde “ green apple”. I had gotten an amazing crepe nutella there the day before and so I decided to order his specialty and signature desert this time! Gelato con crepe nutella!! I had a hot crepe nutella, with chocolate gelato on top for just 5 euro! Words cannot describe how tasty it was! Since the gelato was so cheap there, I even got a little cup of strawberry to eat on the way to the train station later on! So I left Venice with a full belly, a few souvenirs and a hand painted Venetian mask! All in all it was a WONDERFUL weekend away!