Travel Diaries [Venice]

 

I’ll chalk it up to being young, but more likely just because I was so excited to be in Italy, that I bounced back pretty quickly from being a little jet-lagged the first day, and adjusted to the time zone.  I have a family of early risers, so it was no surprise that we made it to the train station by 7:30 a.m.

I can’t complain about it though – because by leaving so early, 1. You take advantage of your adjusting to the time zones (it doesn’t feel that early) and 2. You miss the rush of tourists who wake up at what others would deem a more acceptable hour…

And about 30 minutes later we were stepping out onto the streets of Venice!

There are many water taxis or waterbuses that pull through the train station area and our “Plan of Action” was to grab one of these and take a little water cruise through the canals. The benefit of this is, the tickets you buy to ride the water taxis last 90 minutes – so we rode it to the very end of the line pretty much (taking advantage of the time you bought and enjoying a relaxing boat ride) and then we would make our way back to the train station by wandering the streets back.

Our first stop on our walk was St. Mark’s square – the busiest and most touristy part of the city. We waiting in line for about 20 minutes, but to walk through the church was free. **When traveling throughout Europe, it’s handy to keep a shawl or scarf on hand, as most churches require you to cover up, and if you don’t have anything you have to buy a blue, weird paper shawl**

For the rest of the morning we wandered a bit until I saw a sign for a free art gallery – it ended up being a very creepy collection of Barbie doll art, entitled “Highway to Hell” but we still very much enjoyed it because the art only took up a small section of a large mostly unoccupied building that we were able to look through, and even go out to their docks on the canal.

This was an extremely hot day in Venice – temperatures the week we were in Italy were abnormally high, so the lethargic pace we went was enjoyable and every hour or so we searched out air conditioning for a drink or treat. Even packing a water bottle for each of us was not enough – but it helped keep our costs down, as those necessities are pretty costly in Venice.

My brother, Sam, was our map reader for the trip – he did a pretty good job at keeping us from getting lost through the maze of streets there, only dead-ending us into a canal once ;) But the map was most definitely a necessity – you can purchase one before your trip, otherwise we bought one at the tourist kiosk by the train station.

By 2pm we felt like we had done and seen enough in Venice and had adequately sweated through all our clothes and six bottles of water, that it was time to make our way home.

But the day wasn’t over! Our hosts in Padua wanted to show us one more thing in their hometown. Capula delgi Scrovegni – a cathedral from 1300 with rare paintings by Giotto, which is regarded as one of the greatest masterpieces from the Renaissance, which depicts scene from the gospel, covering the entire interior of the chapel.  Giotto is also responsible for painting at the Duomo in Florence. To visit this chapel a reservation must be made beforehand. Our guide through this visit was Roberto – who doesn’t speak a lick of English, but his passion for Giotto was evident and he was a lovely host to have.