kathryn|kurioso

I just watched The Italian Job, and the movie reminded me that I hadn’t finished my Venice trip report which Kevin had set the deadline to be due few weeks ago?

Kevin had a reading week from school in the first week of November. We were trying to decide on where to go to make up for the fact that I arrived in London in mid October and we missed each other’s birthdays. After some research on the flights, hotel, weather and recommendation from Kevin’s co-workers, we chose Venice!

Travelling in low season and weekdays has its advantages, especially going to a popular city like Venice. The best deal we got on this trip was flying RyanAir which only cost us ?8 for two people. Of course, there were some conditions: airports for both cities were far, and time of flying out was not exactly great, but it maximized our 3 days in Venice.

Day 1 - sunny, clear sky, mild temperature

In order to get to the airport at least 1.5 hours before departure, we basically left our home at 2:30 a.m. for our flight at 6 a.m. We tried to catch our sleep en route to our destination. Treviso was the airport we arrived at. It is the smallest, simplest, ugliest airport that I had ever been to, nevermind shopping at their duty free (I should have got something when I was in Stansted airport in UK?Sigh!). Basically all the passengers at our flight were going to Venice. We took the same bus. After some traffic, an hour plus bus ride to Venice became 2 hours plus.

Before getting into the heart of the romantic city, we walked through the bus port at Piazzale Roma to purchase the Venice card. This card gives you convenience, but not necessary to savings. I would highly recommend people to buy/book it through internet to avoid the language problem, fighting about which age group you fall under, unless you are above 29 in which case you will be paying full price anyway. I had that problem, and it was not fun! After over an hour trying to clear up with the water bus office about the price that I should pay, Kevin and I took the water bus through the Grand Canal to Ponte di Rialto stop where our hotel was located.

We kind of expected that being lost in the city would be one of the well known experience visiting Venice. A 3 minutes walk from Ponte di Rialto to our hotel proved us right. Our first try took us half an hour with a map.

By the time we got to our hotel, it was already 2:30pm. After we put down our stuff, we started to wander around the city by foot and water bus, even though we hadn’t had much sleep.

Not only were we tired, but very hungry as well. By using our TimeOut guide, we went to one of the best restaurants for pizza and scenic open-air eating (Acqua Pazza) in Venice. Restaurants in Venice, especially in San Marco’s area, are over priced. But if you are used to seeing / paying prices in London restaurants, you will be fine in Venice. One thing that many restaurants will charge you for is a covering fee. The pizza place we went charged us 5 euros per head. The cover fee was almost the price of our pizza! We took it as another way of tipping?still expensive.

Venice is not a late night city. At around 5 pm, many shops and museums started closing. We enjoyed our first sunset in Venice at Murano, a smaller island, then we went back to our hotel and took a break before going to a music concert. I don’t think anyone should miss this if they visit the city where Vivaldi lived. The concert was at a church, Chiesa San Vidal, which I think is now only used for the concert by the group- Interpreti Veneziani. We were there half an hour before the show started in order to get the best seats. The concert was outstanding, and it was one of my highlights of this trip. After the concert, we bought one of their CDs which was recommended by one of the musicians.

Late dinner in Venice was not fun. The town was very quiet with all the stores closed but only a few restaurants were open. The one we went to was disappointing and expensive.

Day 2 - sunny, little over cast, mild temperature

After a good night’s sleep and a big breakfast at the hotel (the coffee there was very good), we pretty much spent our entire day at the Piazza S. Marco, and the surrounding area. At the Piazza S. Marco, there were pigeons everywhere. There were street vendors selling seeds that you could buy and feed the pigeons. The pigeons were not afraid of people there. Besides the pigeons, at the piazza, live classical music filled the air. There were a few groups playing at their small stages that they seemed to belong to restaurants. Crossing the big piazza, you couldn’t help but notice the Basilica di San Marco. After seeing the beauty of the interior of the church filled with golden mosaic tiles and sculptures, we went over to visit the next building - the Palazzo Ducale (Doge’s Palace). There were many paintings on the walls and ceilings, which I always find amazing, and also it is something you can only find in Europe?easily. The Doge’s Palace was very big, and contained lots of history about Venice. Kevin and I just wandered around the Palace ourselves, but occasionally we would follow a group with their own tour guide. One group that we followed the longest was a mandarin speaking group, which had a caucasian tour guide that spoke very good mandarin. I was impressed. At the end of the tour of the Palace, we stopped at the gift shop where we got some post cards to write later and an aqua blue glass pendant / leather necklace as my souvenir for this trip.

Following the Palace and some museums in the area, we decided to follow our guide book recommendation to visit Venice’s best sweet store, Marchini Pasticceria. The chocolates were good. Before the sun set, we went back to Piazza S. Marco area, and were determined to get the gondola experience. Doing it in the low season is the best time. The price of riding a gondola is half of the regular season and you get the gondola to yourself instead of sharing it with strangers. It was not as embarrassing as I thought I would be, like the Vegas’s gondola where the guy would sing “O sole Mio”. Our ride was quiet and peaceful. We saw the inside narrow water streets of Venice. We passed by Vivaldi’s home, Marco Polo’s home and his properties, and Casanova’s home. Our “skipper” told us that Venice has approximately 128 churches, one on each island; how life is living on the ground floor when high tide comes; and the meaning of the Venice symbol that you see almost at every head of a gondola. By the time we finished the ride, we saw a beautiful sun set sinking down behind Santa Maria della Salute - another recognisable image of Venice at the entrance of the Grand Canal.

Before heading to our dinner, we stopped by the Vivaldi museum. It was very interesting to see some of the very old string instruments that are no longer used, or before they evolved to today’s instruments. Of course, we learnt some more history of Vivaldi’s life. Again, we followed our guide book and went to a recommended restaurant for value - Alla Zucca (Pumpkin). The restaurant was out of the touristy San Marco’s area, in a more quiet, local Venetian area. Their food (everything that we ordered) was very good - both quality and price. I was impressed with their unique pumpkin flan starter dish. It was the best pumpkin dish I’ve ever had! A side story of that evening (very embarrassing): I again learnt that I cannot drink wine. The worse is it seems that the older I got, the less alcohol my body can handleery sad.

Day 3 - over cast, very windy and cold

It wasn’t easy to both Kevin and I to wake up early in the morning when we only had 6 to 7 hours of sleep. We tried to maximize our time to see everything when stores and museums close early. I really enjoyed having my big breakfast in the morning. We had so much food that it was enough for us to skip lunch, and we took some crackers from the breakfast for later to snack - a great way to save time and money.

After the big breakfast, we checked out from our hotel, and started finding our way to a water bus stop going to visit the world famous place for making glasses: Murano; and to learn some history from its glass museum. It was a very cold day from the strong winds. We were lost in the small, narrow streets trying to find our way to the right water bus stop. We found the water level was very high when we walked along the coast to the water bus stop. With the strong winds, waves kept washing the water in onto the road. Somehow I thought I may able to witness Venice’s acqua alta (high tide), and luckily we didn’t experience that.

It was fascinating to go through the museum. Seeing all the beautiful glasses learning their history, evolution, and technique of how some of the glasses were made. Right after the museum, we went back to our hotel area and visited the Rialto bridge, the biggest bridge in Venice with permanent shops on. On our way to the next stop, the Peggy Gugenheim Museum of modern arts, we stopped by the market to get ourselves some pasta and prosciutto to bring home; and an ice-cream place for some gelato despite the cold temperature - it was delious!

Peggy Gugenheim herself had a beautiful home in Venice which is now a museum displaying her art collections. Besides seeing some famous modern artists’ works, we also learned Peggy Gugenheim’s life, her passion to art … and dogs.

Our last stop was Santa Maria della Salute. The church’s exterior was more impressive than the interiors. We took our break there from the strong winds outside and finished writing our postcards before leaving the city. While we were writing our postcard, the church was playing its organ. The sound was beautiful.

Kevin and I went back to our hotel to pick up our luggage, and headed to the bus stop. We gave ourselves so much time that we had time to stop by a supermarket closed by the bus stop to do some last minute shopping. We bought some sponge cakes, Venice cookies and Italian instant pasta. (We tried the instant pasta on the next day we got home, and it was yummy!)

Our fun in Venice was pretty much ended right after shopping at the supermarket. Our bus was scheduled with our departure flight to arrive at the airport two hours prior. Without much traffic at night, we got there more than two hours as planned. Kevin had his laptop, so we watched a movie - Reservoir Dogs. It was almost two in the morning when we were back to our flat in London. We were never so drained from our other trips before, but we did a lot and it was fun.

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