So I've covered Cinque Terre and Verona. The last I wrote, I was stoked about heading to Venice. I'll pick up there...
For our train ride to Venice we splurged and got first class tickets. That was the best train ride we had. We got free drinks, free food and the bathrooms were actually *intact and *clean! We recommend to take a first class train at least once in Europe.
*I'll cover the bathrooms in my final rant of things I've learned about Europe.
At this point Steven had been sick since Sunday and wasn't getting any better. Italian pharmacies, while plentiful, did not have the medicine we're used to and it was very hard to describe what was the matter with hand gestures.
We arrived in Venice, disembarked the train, and got in line for the waterbus. Which is the most outrageously expensive bus I've ever been on. 7 euro for a pass valid for 60 mins. They are probably a big part of the reason Venetian canals are so polluted (diesel powered boat motors spit oil into the water. yummy).
Anywho, a long waterbus ride later and we're at Academia and make our way towards our B&B, Ca'San Vio. The trouble started brewing when we realized our B&B was down a dead end, unfriendly, somewhat smelly, alley. Then we rang the bell to reach someone, no answer. Rang again, finally Marco answered, told us our keys are in an envelope on the front desk and buzzed us in. I'm thinking that they've just stepped out for a moment and don't worry too much about it. We step into this tiny front room with a host stand/desk thing on the left with our envelope. We see four doors in front of us. The envelope said 1* (1st floor) and the name of our room, which I've forgotten. The room we were standing in smelled musky already and I had a bad feeling about our room. It took us a while to get the key to work but when we finally got the door to our room open, we were so disappointed.
The room was the size of my dining room in Cary (including its bathroom). It fit a double bed and you could touch the wall from the bed on both sides. The bathroom was so small that you would pee, wash your hands and shower at the same time. So long as you didn't mind showering with the bugs that were dancing around the shower drain. Oh and it smelled like mildew and like a pair of shoes that got wet and never dried properly. Side rant: Something to always remember about Venice....it's over water. The water tops the streets almost every year from a high tide in the fall (Septemberish I think). Which means anything on the first floor is flooded, annually. Never stay on the first floor of a Venice B&B/Hotel/Hostel/Anything. Things aren't looking great yet and then for the icing on the cake, Steven pulls out the key chain from the envelope and shows me a key that is bent about 20 degrees. When he attempts to bent it back to straight, it snaps. Guess what door that key opened...yep...the front door to the building. I immediately ring Marco who says he won't be back in town until tomorrow and to "just buzz him whenever we want to come in". Remember that we didn't get him on the first try when we first arrived....yeah....
Needless to say, that didn't cut it. I hopped on the internets and scored the area for a hotel or B&B that had an opening. I stumbled upon Ca Pasani that was just around the corner and it was advertising a special for last minute bookings. We swiped the front door key from another guests envelope and power walked to Ca Pasani. When we arrived, we met the tallest Italian ever made. I kid you not, this guy was gargantuan, he was almost 7 foot (we asked). The tallest Italian ever made was also pretty awesome - he pulled some strings and got us an even better rate than we expected. We gave him our CC number to hold the room, told him we'd be back in 10 mins, literally ran back to Ca'San Vio, grabbed our stuff, re-swapped the keys (no reason to ruin someone elses day), wrote a note to Marco that "Not being able to get in the door is not acceptable" and left. We hadn't paid him yet and we had to pay him in cash, we got lucky there. We were back at Ca Pasani in less than 10 mins.
Where Ca'San Vio failed, Ca Pasani ruled. We had a large comfortable bed, several windows(!), a jetted tub, a completely marble tiled bathroom, an available steam shower, a balcony (available to all the guests), PEOPLE who were THERE working, a bar and restaurant and a friggin bell hop who carried our way-too-heavy backpacks up to our room. And it wasn't even that much more expensive, we got so lucky. But unfortunately this is the one room that I forgot to get photos of.
After we settled in, we attended our new hotel's happy hour and enjoyed a traditional Venetian drink called a Spritz. It's somewhat tart but I really enjoyed it. We chatted up the hotel manager lady, who was really nice, and spoke very good English. We recanted our recent adventure with our B&B and she told us how things like that abound in Venice now. People want the tax write offs so they'll purchase a building or a few rooms in a building, open them up for rental and call it a B&B. They'll bring you breakfast in the morning to keep it "legitimate" but never live anywhere near the building. That sounded very familiar. After happy hour, we managed to find San Marco Square which was completely packed with people. To the point where I didn't even want to bother taking a picture. I never would have gotten a clear view of the square. I did go back for pictures another day but I'll get to that. Dinner that night was disappointing. It involved a cramped restaurant full of tourists, mediocre pizza, bad beer and a headache. I was glad the call it a night after that. Day 1 of Venice, meh.
The next day we did a couple of the usual touristy things. We visited the Acamdemia, which I thought was really neat. They've collected all the old Venetian frescos and have them on display. I noticed the theme for many frescos was very violent. Guys shot with arrows, a lady cutting the head of one guy (which inevitably exposes boobies apparently), another guy getting skinned...it was gruesome. But the skill of those painters was unbelievable. I remember one in particular had a man in a pink robe and I swear the robe looked velvety. As if I could touch it and it would feel like velvet, it was that accurate.
We had several more hours before we expected the Hawns so we wondered over to the end of our neighborhood and found a church that was free to enter. You don't get many free things in Italy, so you need to take advantage of them when you do.
And at the very end of the neighborhood is this random boy holding a frog statue. It was so lifelike that if it hadn't been HUGE I would have thought it was a street performer.
That afternoon, we really explored. After our disappointing first day, I got online to figure out what we were missing. Everything I read said to get away from the tourist areas and get lost among the canals. Find buildings with laundry hanging from the windows and you'll be on he right track. We wandered for hours. It took us a while but we finally got away from it all. And there we found the old Venice. Where the restaurants were filled with Italian speaking people and not tourists of every nationality.
Those structures in the center of the street are old wells.
bahahaha!! I kid you not, this was a the door of some building. Apparently two people live there and the buzzer/mail slot is very alarmed about it.
We snagged some dinner at a cute little place where I tried Italian lasagna and decided I liked my recipe better and enjoyed another Spritz. Then we wandered the streets until everything closed and we had no choice but to sleep.
I'm thinking there may be a 4th and 5th installment of this rant.
Things we've learned since Verona:
- Buy first class train tickets.
- Venice smells, really bad.
- Don't rent a B&B in Venice unless you know someone personally who has stayed there, and they recommend it.
- Don't eat at a restaurant where the prevailing patrons speak English.
- Try Spritz.
- Wander far, far away from main touristy Venice to find the real Venetians.
- Walk, don't waste your money on public transport.
- The tallest Italian ever made lives in Venice.
-Liz
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