#eurails

  Venice, Italy! 

From Naples we took the 5 hour train all the way to the top of Italy.  We were only staying in Venice for one night, because we wanted to stay on the island and it’s pretty expensive.  We were also excited to get to Austria where it would be much cooler.  One night ended up being perfect for our trip.  We stayed up late wandering through the streets once most of the day tourists had left.

I was very surprised at how much I liked Venice.  We knew going in that it was going to be crawling with tourists but once you turned the corner off the main drag, you were by yourself.  It was impossible not to get lost.  There are winds and turns throughout the entire island- sometimes just forcing us into a dead end. 

St. Mark’s Basilica is right on the main square, but we did not tour the inside. Lots and lots of hot, sweaty tourists were waiting in line though! A little fun fact though- there are enough mosiacs to cover 1.5 football fields (85,000 feet), and they were done with mostly gold tiles! 

This is walking into Saint Mark’s square, where most of the tourists can be found. 

We sat off a smaller canal for an hour or so to watch the gondolas float by. Unfortunately it seemed the gondoliers have decided they wanted another job because none of them were singing- or the least bit enthused!   

As the sun sets, it gives you all sorts of interesting shots like this.

This is the Grand Canal.  It was impossible to take a bad picture of it.  I have seen pictures of Venice a million times so it was a surreal experience to see it in person.  We sat here for an hour, watching the sun go down and looking at all of the intricate buildings “floating” above the water.

The Grand Canal is the main thoroughfare through the island.  It is filled with classy water taxi’s, pleasure boats, tour boats, ferries, and gondola’s ripping off their customers for 80 euros for 30 minutes! We also decided against that budget buster! 

A storm passed north of Venice and gave a great lightening show in Saint Mark’s square. Unfortunately for the drought stricken city, the storm didn't produce a single drop of rain. But it was beautiful for us to watch! We stood on the main bridge over the canal and watched the sunset and the pretty lightning storm pass before making our towards the square for some prime symphony night life!

Venice has some really fun tourists traps to avoid if your on a $100/ day budget like us. In the evenings at St Mark’s square, there are lots of fancy restaurants with live performing five-piece symphony, jazz, and classical bands. We thought it was very romantic, so we had a seat at one of these outside restaurants- just for a drink. Well, we took a glance at the menu and lo and behold- it was 15 euros to sit and listen and just a coca-cola was 10 euros. So we decided we could stand and listen to music, which is exactly what we did. It was free and the ambiance was perfect!

The next morning, we went for a stroll on the north side of the island. There are less canals and more residents in this area. We sat in a funny little park, watched some crazy expensive boats float by, and enjoyed the morning before hopping back on the train in the early afternoon.

This is the only floating veggie market we have seen!  He had a great selection of fresh, tasty produce. We spoke with a sweet family on the train en route to Innsbruck about grocery shopping in Venice.  They said it is a “full-time” job buying groceries because you need to go to each respective store for every item of the meal- bakery, butchery, fish market, and fresh produce etc. Also there are no cars in Venice, so you walk to all the different markets to get ingredients for dinner!