Well, it’s official. Venice and Assisi have stolen my hearts. I feel as if all of my Italian dreams have come true in these places. Venice was absolutely beautiful. If I ever have the opportunity to go again, I would do it in a heartbeat. The buildings, the history, the layout…it’s all so interesting.
We left Florence early and were on our bus for about 3 hours. We were on a very tight schedule and made our way to the train station. After a 25 minute train ride, we were in Venice! Immediately, the scenery was 100% different than any other place thus far.
Upon arriving, we began walking the streets of Venice. Matteo was giving us some information here and there, but the bulk of it was being saved for our guide for the walking tour. Once we had navigated though all of the narrow walkways, we made out way to a square. Here, we had about an hour of free time to grab a snack and explore the shops a bit. The group I was with decided on a fruit cup, and we continued on to discover the shops Venice had to offer. It’s almost overwhelming looking at all of the glass they sell. It’s all so beautiful and it’s difficult to not buy all of it.
Soon after, our hour was up and it was time to meet our guide and begin our waling tour. Almost every bridge we crossed was a beautiful photo opportunity. One of the most interesting things I remember from the tour was that Venice is actually sinking. Not quite Titanic sinking, but it is receding 1mm per year. The guide was telling us about how Venice actually floods about 150 times per year. Yep, 150 times. They’re used to it though. They make sure to bring their rain boots to get to work, and if the water is too deep for rain boots, the city puts wooden planks to walk on. For many people, they don’t think twice about the flooding because it’s so common.
After our tour, it was time for the part that everyone had been waiting for. A Gondola ride! We rounded up our group of 6 and embarked on our water journey. It felt like we were in a movie. This also gave me the opportunity to take a closer look at the buildings and just how old they really are. To see what they’re able to go through and withstand is amazing.
On our ride, we passed another gondola where there were two men performing music to the others on that gondola. One of them was singing and the other was playing the accordion. Honestly, how were we not in a movie?
Once we were off the gondola ride, we had a bit more free time to wander around the square. We stopped for gelato and took a seat on some nearby steps to enjoy the day. (Something I forgot to mention was that there’s an old clock tower and the numbers are displayed in roman numerals. You can see the numbers change whenever the time changes). We were able to watch the time change again, which I thought was really cool.
We met up with our whole group and headed back through Venice to the train station. The closer we got, the more pressed for time we were. We ended up running for the train and luckily caught it just in time. We settled in for our train ride back to the bus. Unfortunately, at one of the stops, we ended up staying there for about 25 minutes because some protestors were on the tracks on aways and we (obviously) couldn’t run them over.
Finally, we made it back to our bus. We had walked almost 9 miles, so we were extremely exhausted. We were running late, and had to hurry to dinner to make our reservations. We made it, and began digging in as soon as food was set in front of us. I had pasta with red sauce for the first course and a plate of amazing vegetables for the second course.
After dinner, we made our way to the hotel. Exhausted doesn’t even describe how I felt. My roommates and I tried to get settled in our room (as much as we could, as it was very tiny and we were leaving the next morning) and finally started to fall asleep…when the fire alarm goes off. Megan and I were still awake so we ran out to see what was happening. It shut off after about 10 more seconds. Other people had come out as well, but we all kind of shrugged it off. We came back inside our room, sat on our beds and it went off again. We ended up getting no explanation as to why it was going off and we didn’t have to go outside for anything. Good thing too, as we had to get up very early the next day since we were heading to Milan! Stay tuned! Ciao!