Got that sinking feeling?
Trip Start
Apr 12, 2008
1
11
54
Trip End
Jun 18, 2008
Venice,
Veneto,
Italy
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
- Arrived in Venice. The first thing of interest here is that the city is that it's sinking! The bottom level of the cities buildings are somewhat under water. Also interesting that instead of cars, they use boats for all their transportation needs. The Vaporetto boats that run trips up and down the main canal definitely makes transport around Venice and all its sites conveniently easy.
- Checked out St Marks Square... impressive buildings to be had... but the major attractions were the pigeons that were hovering around the tourists waiting for a feed. Watching girls screaming every 5 minutes when being swarmed by the pigeons was funny and great fun too.
- Walked randomly through the back alleys of Venice to do some exploring and to see what the way of life in Venice is... It definitely feels a lot safer and is cleaner than Rome.
- Listened to a Rick Steves audio guide of the Grand Canal that follows the path of Vaporetto route1.
- Went back to St Marks square at night to hear two groups of musicians on opposing sides of the square compete with each other for an audience to sit at the tables in front of their stand. The bands were composed of a violinist or 2 as lead, a cello, piano a clarinet and an accordion. This was actually pretty cool... although we didn't know most of the songs, the atmosphere was still good.
- An extra highlight at the square at night are the water drains in the middle of the square...
Brian at St. Mark's Square
but instead of draining water, water comes up and forms giant pools of water. Its funny watching people listening to the bands and finding themselves ankle deep in water... HAHA. <Lang's Extended Version>
We arrived in Venice San Lucia Station at around 7.30am, the train ride went much faster than I thought - well, we managed to get some sleep, although Brian complained that I snored for half of the night, keeping him up for a little while.. haha.. Boy, I would think that he would be use to it by now.. =P
Anyway, we made our way out of the station and right there in front of the station was the Grand Canal.. WOW!! There were old buildings, people, bridges, gondolas and boats of all sorts... I was excited, we were finally in this sinking city, seeing it for ourselves - well, Brian needed this pointed out to him again..
We purchased a 72hr vaporetto pass to cover us for the water buses anytime we wanted, a single pass costs 5 Euros itself, so after about 6 rides, our tickets will be worthwhile.. We'll have to see if this is the case..
With our heavy packs on, we caught slow boat #1 to the Rialto stop, and as the name suggests, it meant that we were dropped off close to the Rialto Bridge, which was built in 1588 and the 3rd one built on that spot. The reason for stopping here though was to drop our packs off as we were staying nearby.. We managed to find our way with the directions provided and proceeded to climb the 6 flights of stairs to the top..
Feeding the Flying Rats
I think Brian was glad that we had the packs today, rather than a trolley case.. Once we were released from our packs, we firstly headed out to St. Mark's Square.. It was raining but that didn't dampen my mood (mind the pun) because we were in Venice!!
We saw a few stalls selling bird seed, apparently the government is trying to reduce bird numbers by putting contraceptives in the food that they sell. There were quite a few other tourists feeding the pigeons, or flying rats, so we gave it a go ourselves with our packet of left-over biscotti. It worked a treat and soon the pigeons were landing on our hands, shoulders and head. It was hilarious watching some of the other people as every now and then you'd hear a girl start screaming because she was being attacked..
Listening to an audio guide I downloaded online, we strolled around St. Mark's Square and just enjoyed the general atmosphere of Venice, before taking everyone's advice to 'get lost'... And lost we did get!
It was just magical strolling along the alleyways, across little and big bridges and then finding yourself in a beautiful square or in front of a church. Sometimes you'd see other tourists or locals, other times you'd be walking alone soaking up the atmosphere..
We eventually made our way back to our B&B for a much needed rest. Well, Brian fell asleep for around 4-5 hours, while I spent some time updating and catching up on our blog for Rome.
By around 7pm, we were kinda ready to head out again, this time we took the vaporetto back to the train station to start another audio tour, this time to do the Grand Canal tour via slow boat #1. It was cold out there, but we didn't really care..
We traveled past the Rialto & Accademia Bridge, saw where the fire department was, went by numerous churches and palaces, eventually getting off at the end of St. Mark's Square again. By this time, it was around 9pm, and a small crowd had started to gather around the square as two groups of musicians were out there playing classical as well as popular songs.. This just topped off our wonderful 1st day and I can honestly say that I love Venice! =)
