Venice

9/14 – Day 16: Venice

This morning, we made our way to the station to catch a train to Venice and find out airBnB just outside the islands for the next few days.

We didn’t have any specific plans for today…early afternoon, we made it onto the main Venice islands, and wandered around aimlessly on the small streets, crossing over the canals from tiny island to tiny island without any map or purpose. It was pretty nice!

Nearing dinner time, we decided to grab a quick bite to just hold us over for a little, and got a pizza roll. Unfortunately, the guy wasn’t paying attention when heating it up, and pretty much burnt it. So then he gave us a piece of pizza for free…and almost burnt that one too!

As we were looking to find dinner somewhere, we checked out one of the gondolas, just to look into for one of the next couple days. This Tunisian family of 4 was also looking into it, and then asked us if we wanted to split a ride…and we figured..sure, why not…might as well! The ride out on the water was nice…half of it on narrow canals with no other gondolas or boats – as opposed to other areas where we just saw a line of gondolas rising one after the other. The views from the canals also give a nice different perspective than from land… and even different from when you’re on a vaparetto (water bus).

After our ride, we made it out to Piazza San Marco, and sky was starting to dim by now. After a little time here, we continued to walk around aimlessly until it started to get pretty late…then we needed to pull out the phone and figure out our way back.

We wound up getting lost a couple times on the way back… but the biggest mistake I made was not fully reading the directions the first time around – so I didn’t realize that the path included a boat ride across the grand canal (I thought it was just a long bridge). So what should’ve probably been around a 45 minute walk back to the bus station, took over 1.5 hours.

Also…we hadn’t eaten dinner yet. So near the station, we stopped off at a quick serve type place, and had our first taste of a Venetian meal – Spaghetti with Nero (squid ink) sauce. It was overpriced and decent… what we got for going to a place so close to the “city entrance”… but it got the job done! A good day overall to just get a feel of the place.

9/15 – Day 17: Murano & Burano

After a pretty long day yesterday, we decided to sleep in today before starting out our day. Our plan was to go out to the islands of Murano and Burano, so I went out and bought us a couple of 24-hr transport passes and got some take out breakfasts for us to have before starting our day.

We were able to hop on the vaparetto pretty much right after we got off the bus into Venice – making our way to Murano, getting some more nice views of the city while on the Grand Canal. But not before getting our cool tourist hats to shield us from the sun!

In Murano, we pretty much just wandered around, going from glass shop to glass shop…seeing the fascinating works of art various glass masters had created. We were able to also see a demonstration at one place, where 2 masters worked together to create an elephant from scratch. Pretty intriguing! Other than this though, not really any pictures of glass artwork, since almost all of the places don’t allow for pictures.

Before making our way off the island, we decided to have our lunch at a place which had some good yelp ratings and tasty looking pictures. The service was pretty terrible here! It probably took 3 times longer for the waiter to initially just give us our menus, than it took for the food to come out to us after we ordered. Thankfully…the food was delicious! We ordered a seafood pizza on nero dough, and fresh grilled calamari…both soo good!!

After our late lunch, we made our way to the docks, to catch a water bus to Burano. I didn’t realize it at the time because of the map picture, but it wound up being a 40 minute ride out. It’s first stop was another island called Mazzorba..which was probably about 30 minutes. It was supposed to continue on to Burano..but for some reason, they told us we needed to get off, and transfer to another one. So we did, and then when the next boat arrived, I asked the guy if it was going to Burano, and he said yes…get on. We’re on the boat…and it’s heading back to Murano!! Ugh!!! So another 30 min back to Murano…and then another boat back to Burano. And then…to add insult to injury, after we got to Mazzorba the second time around, we realized that the island actually connects to Burano, and it would’ve just been a 10-15 minute walk over. Ugh!! But we figured this out just after the boat left the dock, so we needed to stay on the boat for 1 more stop before finally getting to Burano 1 hr 40 min later!

Burano was instagram heaven though. Every building is painted in different shades of bright colors…and just makes for some beautiful pictures. Because of our boating mishaps though, we didn’t have much daylight to enjoy it all, and got there just as the sun was setting. The sunset was beautiful though…just wish we could’ve been there a little bit earlier. Definitely worth the longer trip out there though.

After we had our fill of sunset, we made our way back on a longer boat ride back to the bus station and called it a good day/night – as we were getting up early the next morning!

9/16 – Day 18: Venezia

We woke up super early this morning to try and catch sunrise at St Mark’s Square, as well as be able to take pictures there without a throng of people all over. We took a vaparetto from the bus station to Ponte Rialto – and it was beautiful to see the sky just starting to color up while on the canal.

We made it to San Marco’s pretty much right on time, as there weren’t too many people out there yet…so we got some pretty good pictures in.

Walking closer to the docks, we could actually see the sun rising up, although I probably spent a little too much time in the square itself, so didn’t get it see it rise from the start.

From here, we took another water bus out to the island of Lido. After a small pizza breakfast to follow our earlier croissants, we walked over to the beach. The first time we got to use our swimwear on the trip!! We got in the water for a little bit, but didn’t go out too far, as we didn’t want to leave our stuff too unattended, even though there was only a few people out there. Oh..we also saw a couple of men decide to just walk out into the water buck naked… at least there were a little further away.

After a little rest on the beach, we decided to make our way back to our place to take a midday nap in the comfort of our bed. Fully refreshed, and filled with some quick takeout pizza kebab. Nothing special, but tasty enough to get us going!

Back in Venice now, we decided to walk around areas which we hadn’t previously hit…basically making a big loop around…seeing some more churches along the way…alleyways and canals…a closer view of Ponte Rialto, and a neat museum that had a free entrance.

For dinner, we checked out this place called Dal Moro’s, which was the top-rated eatery on google and yelp. It’s a simple place tucked away in a small alleyway, serving up fresh pastas FAST! By fast, I mean, as soon as the credit card transaction completed, our pasta was ready! And it was delicious!!! So delicious, we forgot to take pictures of the actually food…only the boxes.

After our bellies were good and full, we made the short walk over to St Marks Square to relax and enjoy the evening lights there. We also got to enjoy the fine live music from several of the restaurants in the square..going from restaurant to restaurant as each small orchestra finished up there set. It was a lovely evening!