Venice, a city on water!

Venice. Venezia. We’ve finally made it. It was early in the morning, around 9AM when we arrived. Before we got here, the train had to go on a bridge from the mainland Italy. There was at least 5 miles of bridge that we crossed. It was foggy then, but we could still see the water and Venice itself nearing.



Santa Lucia train station wasn’t at all big in size. Then again, space was luxuriously expensive and scarce that it made sense to not have a station as big as, for example, Berlin Hauptbahnhof.

When we exited the station, we were treated with a great view of the Grand Canal. It was so great, that even though we didn’t get enough sleep the night before in the train, we felt energetic and ready to sightsee.









We took a moment to absorb the fact that we were in Venice. The sights were so different from anything we’ve ever seen before. There were absolutely no cars, as the roads were either too small, or just won’t make sense as there were just too many people. Sure people could go to Venice via cars, but they’d park them on a special section of Venice, then they would have to walk or use one of the many water transportations.





We checked in early and put our stuff away, and then we were off. At first, we just wondered aimlessly. We didn’t have a map, other than the one provided by the hotel, which was actually not so detailed and had many streets missing. Therefore we had only the main streets to go on, which would be fine, only we ended up on small streets and alleys anyway that we were definitely lost. But by getting lost, we found places and things.









We finally found a way out and made it across the Grand Canal from where the train station was. There, we found a restaurant that seemed to be run by a family. Being that it would be our first real dining experience in a real Italian restaurant, we figured it’d be good to eat at a family-run restaurant. So we ate our first authentic Italian spaghetti at Ristorante de Nino. It wasn’t bad, to say the least. I had a weird one, spaghetti with egg and bacon, unheard of before in the US. Sheilla had the simple, common one, spaghetti with tomato sauce. Overall however, it was a pleasant experience.



We decided to walk around some more, passing through and going into several shops. There were a lot of shops that sold murano-made items. Murano was a type of glass that could be molded into various shapes and sizes. Nearly all of them were unique and very artistic. To say the least, they were expensive. A small, pea-size murano item could cost at least 1 €. A purse-size one could cost up to 100 €. Some were sold over a grand.









Eventually, we found ourselves within the Piazza San Marco, or St. Mark’s Square.





There were soooooooo many pigeons!







And a highly decorative cathedral.



We walked around and towards more water and found the bridge that was told in some stories of how it was used for prisoners to go across. I wasn’t so sure how credible that story was, so further research might be necessary.







Sheilla was inspired by the side-street artists who painted sceneries of within Venice that she bought one as well. We weren’t going to tell who the art was for. But this was the guy who created it and sold it to us.



Afterwards, we walked towards our hotel, since by this point we’ve walked for so many miles that our feet began to give up. We found a small restaurant along the way, which didn’t really have good food and the service was poor. Therefore, there was no need to take a picture and speak of it in the blog any further. Thus, ‘twas the end of our first full day in Venice.