Planes, trains and vaporetti

As Jen and I discussed our options for her sister's only weekend in Europe, we needed something that could hold its own against Paris. There aren't too many cities that made the short list...Rome, Barcelona and Venice. In the end, the art and food of Roma lost to the romance and charm of Venice.

The only difficulty with Venice is that it was a bit harder to get to. Since the few direct flights from Paris to Venice were really expensive, we "optimized" our route economically - but not necessarily against practicality.

We started our journey early Saturday morning at 6am and left the apartment to walk to the metro. From there, we changed lines twice to get to the RER (suburban train) that we then took to the airport. Of course, at the airport we had to check bags since American carry-on luggage is still too big for European planes. We flew Paris to Milan and waited to collect our luggage and then found the commuter train that connected the Milan airport to downtown Milan where the train to Venice left from. We got on the train to Milan, but had to take the Milan metro from the terminus of the airport train to the central Milan train station. Once we got to the Milan train station, we waited in line for 30 minutes to buy our tickets to Venice. We tried to do this in advance, but were unable do it online. Unfortunately, the next train with open seats was three hours later, so we grabbed a quick pizza at a nearby restaurant and then jumped on an early, but fully booked, train. I normally do this for work and there are always a couple of open seats that you can find. Luckily we found two seats together for Melissa and Jen, but I ended up standing for 2 hours. We made it to the Venice train station by 4pm and then bought a vaporetto (boats that operate like buses on Venice "streets")ticket. We took the vaporetto down the Grand Canal to St Marks Square and had to change vaporetto there. Since we were staying on the island of Lido, we needed one more vaporetto to get us to our hotel. Twenty minutes later around 5:30pm we ended our journey at our hotel, dropped our bags and headed back on a vaporetto to Venice. I think that makes a nine segment journey over 12 hours time! Other than saving quite a bit of money, we took some pride in the fact that we could manage such a trip with relative ease. As this was Melissa's first trip to Europe, she probably wondered if all of our trips were this complicated.

Jen and I have both been to Venice before (this was my third time), but there is always something new to see. On our way back into Venice from the hotel, we passed a massive cruise ship carefully being tugged out to sea. The giant ship was striking against a background of buildings that were smaller in size that the ship itself. Venice is really one of many islands that sit in a lagoon open to the sea in a few points. The lagoon is closed in almost completely by a long, thin island called Lido. In most places in the lagoon - especially the canals in Venice - the depth of the water is only 15 feet. As Venice itself is overcrowded and overpriced, we have opted to stay in Lido our last two visits. Since it's only a 15 minute vaporetto ride from Lido back to Venice, it's not much of a hassle. Lido is more of a small beach community than an international destination but usually plays host to some of the tourists visiting its famous neighbor. The other thing we like is that it has a identifiable local population and some decent restaurants. View Larger Map (Venice is the fish-shaped island at the center, Lido the long thin island on the right)

Venice is a small island, however, it's a maze to navigate. There are endless narrow alleyways, many that deadend in a building or a canal. You can try to use a map, but you usually spend longer identifying your location than it takes to walk somewhere. Getting lost is a rite of passage that every tourist to Venice must go through at least once per trip. That means, in effect, that you've left the main arteries where all the people crowd and have decided to either find your own way or explore some of the back neighborhoods. Amazingly, both Jen and I did have a very good mental map from our last visit and only once found ourselves lost when we tried to cross the island on return from a trip to another island.

We spent the first night in town getting reacquainted with the main part of the city - St Marks square. If you looked at Venice from above, you would see tourists as ants moving through the network of streets that all converge into St Marks square. It always seems to be crowded in St Marks square and nearly impossible to take a photo without someone else in it.

The next morning we took the boat trip to Murano to check out the famous glass factories. We missed these the last trip and wanted to see where the ubiquitous glass jewelry is made. Jen and Melissa had a great time jumping from shop to shop picking out pieces for themselves and others.

That evening, we returned to one of our favorite things from our last trip - a Vivaldi concert at the beautiful church of San Vitale.

What better way to hear Vivaldi than in the city in which he originally composed his music. It was as good as we remember and set us up for an evening of classical music as we finished the night listening to the "dueling orchestras" that perform in St Marks square. We sat outside, sipping drinks and listening to music for another hour.

The next day we spent more time exploring Venice by foot and returning to some of our favorite places. We even managed to negotiate a gondola ride after walking away from the initial offer of 150 euros for a one hour ride! The last time Jen and I were in Venice, we did the gondola ride at night. It was really nice and quiet and we felt like we had the canals to ourselves. This time we went during the day and were got caught in canal traffic jams. Still, I think we prefer the daytime ride because you can see so much more. As we passed one of the other gondolas, we saw a couple who had also hired a singer who was singing "O sole mio" as we passed. His voice reverberated off the sides of the buildings and down the canals. Our gondolier was whistling some of the Italian classics as we made our way around and wasn't too shabby himself. Jen and I thought we might just pay him for another ride so Melissa, who's single, could be serenaded alone by her personal Italian fantasy! Venice might be overcrowded with tourists and the worst place in Italy to get a good Italian meal. Good hotels are hard to find without paying a lot of money and everything is pricey. And it probably isn't the easiest or cheapest place to get to either. But Venice is such a unique and beautiful city that we will certainly return again some day. At every turn there is a postcard worthy photo. The city is so picture perfect that I think it almost looks fake sometimes - like a real life Disneyworld.

We were sad to leave when the time eventually came. Not only because we were really enjoying ourselves but also because we had two vaporetto's, a bus, a flight, another bus and a taxi before we finally got back home.

Venezia

(click for our Venice photos)