VENICE, ITALY

I have never seen anything like Venice. What a confusing, mysterious, decaying, enchanting, wonderful place!  Arriving at the Venice train station at 8 am on Friday morning, Aubrey Anne and I quickly took the attitude that getting lost is the only way to find our way anywhere. The only problem with that plan was that our giant packs got really heavy after an hour or so, but even with horrible directions we found our hostel and put our bags down until we could check in at 1pm. Our hostel was in a great location on the main island and our front door was 2 feet from a canal with gondolas. 

All I had heard from Aubrey Anne about her last trip to Venice was gelato, pizza, gelato, pizza, and gelato. Even though it was early, we headed straight to a great pizza places I had heard of, and by headed straight I mean we walked back and forth across the Rialto Bridge about 6 times trying to figure out which way was up. Once at the pizza place, the only people that came in to order pizza were locals, and we took that as a great sign. They assured us that sharing one pizza would be more than enough for both of us, and after eating two of those, we left happy on the search for chocolate gelato. 

All we wanted was a nap in the afternoon, but no one at the hostel seemed to know how to put our bunk beds together, so we ended up napping on our packs on the floor. The next morning, our beds that were finally put together caused problems again, since my phone fell off the top bunk in the night and the battery popped out, so my alarm didn’t go off. We had met a girl from Scotland the night before who also wanted to become an Art Therapist, and we decided to travel by water bus around to the smaller sights of Venice for the day with her. Even though the water bus was the most inefficient form of transportation I’ve ever partaken in, it was a great way to see the city. We went St. Georgio, an island that used to be the religious hub of the city when Venice was a brand new city. The church had a basilica with a great view of the main island, and even though I believed the attendant when he tried to trick me that it was closed, it was cool, figuratively and literally, from the top.

Alicia the Scot, Aubrey Anne, and I ordered pizza’s and ended up having to run back to the water bus with our boxes so we wouldn’t miss it. We headed to Burano. Of my whole trip so far, Burano is probably the best thing I’ve seen. It was a little colorful island that you would expect to see in the Greek Isles, but it is built on canals like Venice and they have great prices on the famous Murano glass, the island that most tourists head to instead of Burano. I don’t know what to say about it except go and see. You will love it too.

An older couple suggested to us at St. Georgio to go see Torcello, an even more remote island off of Burano,  because it holds the oldest preserved building in all of Venice. The 8^th century church was closed for renovations that  day, though, and the island was pretty remote, so we quickly water bused from Torcello to Murano and got some more gelato. I was fascinated with the cemetery island off the Venice, since after all of the residents buried there had to be moved after 40 years to make space for new Venetians who’d passed away. I was nervous the whole time because I thought the sign written in Italian told us that the cemetery closes at 6pm, and I wasn’t trying to spend the night there. We ended up seeing a beautiful sunset from the cemetery boat bus stop and then Aubrey Anne and I were off on a mission to get lost in Venice.

We figured that the best Italian restaurant couldn’t be on a tourist’s map, so when Aubrey Anne’s dad agreed to pay for a nice meal out, we tried too hard to find that hidden gem restaurant where the locals eat. Venice is funny like that, I guess, because we kept ending up in St. Marks Square, the biggest tourist trap of all, or in a maze of streets that somehow all ended in canals. We found a great restaurant even if it wasn’t as secluded as we’d hoped, and went out on the town with the entire loud group from the hostel that night.

Saturday, Aubrey Anne and I checked our packs at the train station and went to see what else we could happen to find in Venice. We happened to find the same delicious pizza place from the first day and ordered a “maxi” pizza this time and a loaf of the bread that people who knew the owners and spoke Italian kept coming in the pizzeria to buy. While it was baking Aubrey Anne went to find a cheap bottle of wine and a wine key, and then we were off with our “maxi” pizza box that barely fit in the narrow alleys.  We eventually made it to St. Mark’s square, the tourist center we were trying to avoid for dinner the day before, and sat against a wall in the middle to enjoy our pizza and wine. Tourists kept coming up to take our picture and we were confused why whole tour groups would pause in front of us, until we realized with were sitting in front of a giant poster about the history of St. Mark’s square. 

We didn’t get in trouble for eating until we were already done (“Dis is not a picnic garden!”) and filled the rest of the day with a trip to the beautiful basilica mosaic-ed with glass from Murano and by writing post cards sitting by the Grand Canal. Rain in Venice is beautiful and I was lucky that is started raining a couple hours before our train left. I loved the winding streets crowded with umbrellas and we met a hilarious waiter in a coffee shop who, upon finding out we were American, kept pretending he was on American Idol. 

It was starting to get dark, so we found a small grocery store to buy olives, bought tomatoes from a street produce vendor, and bought wine and olive oil at a specialty shop to accompany our bread from our favorite pizzeria, and had our second picnic of the day on the steps of the Venice train station, overlooking the canal and the rain.