Sharon's Travels 2011: Venice

Day 1

I arrived in Venice after many hours on the train (including my detour to Rome to get my camera). Upon arriving I found the hostel (with some difficulty as the street numbers in Venice aren’t always in order). Once settled into my room, I set out to explore Venice. I walked along the canal, saw the Rialto bridge, and went to a restaurant for dinner. For dinner I had spaghetti carbonara with a glass of white wine. After dinner, I got a glass of limoncella for dessert. I walked back to my hostel (just a little tipsy), then went to bed.

Day 2

Today was another very busy day. After waking up and getting ready to go, I set out on a day of sightseeing. I decided to walk around Venice and go to Piazza San Marco. Along the way I stopped in lot of shops (checking out Murano Glass), a few churches, a bakery, and finally ended at Piazza San Marco. I went into St Mark’s Basilica (San Marco in Italian), but I found the outside much more impressive than the inside.

Today I spent most of the day in the high traffic tourist areas, so by about 5 pm I was tired and ready to head back to the hostel.

Tonight I decided to have dinner at the hostel, I figured it was hard to go wrong, dinner for 5 euros. Turns out I was wrong, so very wrong. Our main was gorgonzola risotto, it was barely edible and didn’t taste like anything other than cheese…no other flavours, just cheese. Our Second course was bacon quiche, only the quiche was made up of nothing other than bacon and pastry (and maybe some cheese?). It also was not very tasty. Let’s just say I was happy I bought a beer when dinner started, because I needed it to help wash everything down. For dessert we had a marble cake that was fresh out of the oven (still warm)…this was definitely the best part of the meal. But for 7 euros (the beer I’d bought was 2 euros), I’d gotten a barely edible meal and a full belly of food. After dinner I unwound a bit and headed to bed.

Day 3

Today was a much better day than yesterday.

This morning I took a traghetto (a transit gondola) ride across the canal. For 0.5 euros I’d gotten my gondola ride – it wasn’t fancy or anything, but it was just what I was looking for.

I’d gotten a ride across the canal to get to a vaperetto (water bus) station, but that station didn’t sell tickets, so I had to walk to the next station. Once I finally got my day pass, I accidentally got on a boat going the wrong way. What an eventful day so far! Once I’d gotten the boats all figured out (and got on one going in the right direction), I got to the stop outside the train station. At this stop I transferred to another vaperetto headed to the island of Murano.

Along the ride to Murano, I decided to get off the boat early and go to see the cemetery. Italian cemeteries are very grandiose, I’m convinced that there’s no simple tombstone in the entire country of Italy. After my detour to the cemetery I arrived in Murano.

Murano was very neat – a small little island where their main product is Murano glass. I went to a demonstration by a glass master. He’d made a blown glass vase and a sculpted glass horse. I know I’ve seen these demos before, but it was neat to see them done where some of the techniques were invented.

I also found it quite alarming how expensive everything was, especially considering that the glass master was able to make each thing so quickly.

After seeing the demonstration I went on a hunt to find some Murano glass beads that I could make a necklace out of when I return to Canada. It was a tough task, very few places actually sold the beads themselves, most shops just sold the necklaces pre-made. But, in the end I was successful, I found a few beads that I liked, as well as picked up a few Murano Glass pendants.

When I was finished in Murano I went back to the island of Venice, and made a quick stop at the hostel. I’d meant just to pick up something I’d forgot then go to the beach, but another girl at the hostel made a good suggestion of something to do – tonight what the free museum night in Venice so I decided to go to that instead of the beach.

The other girl and I made plans for when/where to meet, and I set off, I still had a bit more shopping to do. While wandering Venice yesterday I’d seen some souvenirs that I liked, so I went and did a bit of souvenir shopping.

After souvenir shopping I met up with the girl from my hostel, and we went for dinner. I wasn’t exactly enthusiastic for the restaurant choice, but she had a burger craving, and wanted to go to the Hard Rock Café. So I figured if I was having North American food I’d go all out, so I decided to have beer and nachos. After dinner I had some gelato, and we went to check out the Venice at Night art shows. The neatest thing that we saw was this exhibition called Glasstress, where everything was made out of glass.