Notes from Abroad

Trip Stats:
Cities visited: 5
Broken Sunglasses: same one
Major injuries: 1 almost healed bruise
Lost clothing: 1 pair of undies
Blisters: see story below
Flights taken: 4
Trains taken: 2
Gelatos consumed: 3

19 hours in Italian time is actually somewhere closer to 21. That’s how long my train took to get from Palermo to Venice. I have to say, though, it wasn’t all that bad.

I left Palermo around 4PM on Thursday and arrived in Venice around 1PM on Friday. I somehow managed to snag an entire cabin to myself with bunk beds for the overnight journey. It was a little weird being completely on my own on a train I’d never ridden before because I wasn’t able to pick up clues from the people around me about when to get off, how to get the door to lock but be openable from the outside (something that annoyed the conductor a bit) and things like that. Ah well, I just made it up as I went along.

The one part that through me for a loop, though, was when they loaded the train onto a ferry to get from Sicily to the mainland. I’d read about this type of transport in a travel guide somewhere but I wasn’t entirely sure if I was supposed to stay in my car, go out and into the boat or what. That part of the trip was pretty long as I hoped that I was in the right place at the right time and wouldn’t be shipped off somewhere else because I didn’t change trains on the ferry or something.

I slept like a log on that train. Once I’d locked all of my stuff down so that you would need a hacksaw in order to get it and by that time they’d hopefully make enough noise to wake me up, I pulled down my top bunk, climbed in and fell asleep. I think I managed to get a solid 8 hours in with only a few wakeups here and there. I woke up somewhere around Florence, just in time to watch the hills of Tuscany in the wee hours of the morning through my window.

Fast forward to Venice itself:
I booked the hostel that the Busabout website recommended. It was a campsite, which kind of worried me a bit. But, like I said earlier, I would sleep out on the train tracks as long as I could have some other people my own age to talk to! So I got off the train and walked out of the station. There I was standing on the Grand Canal. Seriously one of the best locations for a train station ever. It literally dumps you right into the heart of Venice. I was feeling much better already and since I’d had some time before the next shuttle was due to go from the train station to the campsite, I just plopped myself down on the steps of the station and watched everyone buzz about.

I thought Palermo was hot. Wrong. It’s arctic compared to Venice. Let me put it this way: Venice is so hot that the band-aid I put on the blister on my right foot actually melted itself onto my sandal. Melted. As in practically liquified. I’m not sure what the actual temperature was, but the sun was unbelievable. I think I got more tanned sitting on those steps for 40 minutes than I would have on an entire day at the beach.

After deciding that I didn’t feel like waiting another 2 hours for the next shuttle (I happened to arrive during the lunch break) I found my way to the public buses and figured out how to get to the campsite. Mission: accomplished, no big deal. I settled into my summer camp-style cabin, threw on some cooler clothes, grabbed my book, and made my way to the pool. I didn’t actually go swimming or anything, just plopped down in one of the deck chairs and read for a few hours I think.

I’d intended to go into Venice for dinner but missed the last shuttle before the dinner break by about 45 seconds. Instead, I had to go to the market at the campsite and figure out what to do about food. Of course, everything was painfully overpriced.

At this point I started to meet all sorts of people who also happened to be doing the BusAbout tour – the majority from Australia and New Zealand – and we were just chatting and eating, etc. etc. I was liking Venice already.

I met a girl named Laura (from Canada) who’s on Busabout who is also traveling on her own. Sweet. We planned to go into Venice the next day.

We were in Venice by 10:30 in the morning and had one mission: Breakfast. By the time we got ourselves unlost, though, it was practically lunch and we decided to just get sandwiches instead. We found our way to Piazza San Marco and hung around there eating lunch. Venice is a maze. I’m still surprised we made it out of there.

We saw everything we wanted to see by about noon and then were caught figuring out what to do with the rest of the day. My guidebook pointed out Murano (one of the islands just off of the main island of Venice) as a nifty place to visit. It’s home to a lot of artistic glass studios so we thought that would be fun. We bought the 12 hour pass for the vaporetto (the waterbus) and hopped on.

On our way out we’d noticed these 4 seats at the back of the boat that weren’t enclosed like the rest. They were already taken, but they seemed like a really cool spot to sit. You get all of the views and you’re not trapped in the hot underbelly of the boat. We made it our mission to get those seats on the way back.

Murano was cool. The glass shops had some really great stuff but it was all super expensive and super breakable. Though they would have made great souveniers, the odds of them lasting the entire trip would have been slim to none. Sad. We drowned our sorrows by sitting along the side of the canal with some gelato.

We walked around for a bit. It’s a quaint little area, but then we decided to get back on the vaporetto to head back for San Marco to line up to check out San Marco. We slowly made our way back to the outside seats on the vaporetto. It took almost 2/3 of the trip back so, to make it worth our while (and to get our money’s worth out of the 12-hour passes that we bought for 16 euro) we decided to stay on and just loop around. The seats were great and they pretty much provided us with a waterfront tour of the entire Grand Canal and more. I think it was something like 3 hours later (which is about 3 loops?) we’d gotten a bit too much sun, Laura was soaked by a wave, and the boat was getting a bit crowded. We hopped off at San Marco to see about the cathedral.

We lined up and made it in where we assumed they would take our bags and we could go check out the inside. We got to the front of the line and the guy literally pushed us to the exit “no bags!” Jeeeeeez. It turns out that you have to go to this other building to leave your backpacks and they don’t even lock them up. We weren’t too comfortable with that and decided to go in search of some more gelato instead. It’s a good thing we did because by the time we’d walked from the other building back to San Marco, they’d closed the cathedral for the day. That would have been a waste!

Since our bus was scheduled to leave at 8AM the next day, our next mission was to get some food for breakfast. It had to be something that didn’t need to be refrigerated and it had to be something quick and portable. We also wanted to pick up a bottle of bellini just because you’re supposed to (and because it was supposedly very tasty). After wandering the streets for the best deal of gelato (huge scoops for about 1 euro each. Stand around and watch the people get their cones before you. If the scoop isn’t heaping, forget about it.) Oh, right, and we wanted to get pizza. We weren’t exactly hungry, but again, it’s just something you’re supposed to do. Plus, if we ate in a restaurant, it meant that we wouldn’t have to pay to use a public bathroom. Score.

So the pizza was decent. Nothing spectacular, but then again I’m partial to NYC-style pizza. While we were eating we saw this girl walk by with a giant cone of gelato. We determined that she had to have gotten it recently given its appearance and its lack of melting. After figuring out which direction she came from we decided that we’d have to go check it out – it might be just what we’ve been looking for all day. It was. So many flavors, so little time! The scoops were massive. I <3 gelato.

Last stop: breakfast foods and bellini. We found a bakery/liquor store owned by this old man and got what we needed. At this point we had about 45 minutes (I think?) to get back to the bus depot in order to catch the last shuttle before the dinner break (which would mean another 2 hours of meandering around). We hopped on the waterbus again and made it to our stop with 3 minutes to spare. We literally ran to the bus and got there just as he was closing the door. Thankfully, he opened it for us and we were good to go.

Add on another night of hanging out with other BusAbouters, drinking our bellini, and generally just enjoying my time and all in all Venice has been one of my favorite stops and one of my favorite cities of this trip so far. I love that there are no cars on the roads and some alleyways are no wider than the little old ladies walking through them. You spend your entire day crossing over bridges and it seems like you’re never more than 20 steps from the water. If it weren’t so touristy I think it would be a great place to live. Murano seemed like a good compromise – not too touristy but every bit as quaint as Venice itself.

Verdict: Definitely a place I’d like to go back to as some point.

Next stop: Roma! Arrivderci!

Tags: Adventures, City, Italy, Journal, Venice