ITALY: Venice

Ciao amici!  I hope you all are having a great week and are getting ready for the weekend.  We’re almost there!

If you’re new to my blog, I’m currently doing a series on a trip to Italy my husband and I took this past October.  You can read about our stop in Rome here and our visit to Sorrento & Positano here.  Our third day in Italy was spent in Venice.

How to get to Venice from Sorrento:
We took the Circumvesuviana Train from Sorrento to Napoli Centrale and then ItaliaRail from Napoli Centrali to Venezia S. Lucia.  There are two train stations in Venice, however if you want to enter the main area of Venice make sure you purchase tickets to Venezia S. Lucia.  It was about a 5 hour train ride from Napoli Centrale but the time went by quickly.  Like I mentioned before, we loved the train system in Italy!

The train drops you off in the heart of the main island and it is craziness from the moment your feet hit the pavement.  Venice was packed with tourists and locals alike.  It was All Saint’s Day weekend so we think that’s why it was so crowded.  But who knows?  It was our first time there and we knew it was a tourist destination.

Our Airbnb was located on another island (Lido di Venezia) which we had to take a vaporetto (water bus) to.  If you’re going to be in Venice for more than one day and plan to move around via vaporetto, I highly suggest you purchase a pass.  We only purchased a one-way ticket and ended up having to buy more tickets, thus, spending more money than necessary.  Something we realized in hindsight.

Venice, or as Italians call it, Venezia, is pretty amazing.  Side note: I think I’ve been calling everything amazing during this trip.  It’s unlike anything you’ve ever seen.

Once we dropped off our luggage, we hopped back on the vaporetto to cross the water and start exploring.

It was exciting just knowing we were in Venice.  You could feel the culture and the history all over.  The canals are insane (a little smelly at times) but absolutely beautiful.  There are so many alley ways to wander through.  Our first stop was at a cute wine shop/bar where we ordered two glasses of vino bianco to go (you can do that in Italy!) and began exploring.

That’s one of the cool things we noticed in Italy, you can buy wine and they will provide you with plastic cups so you can walk around and enjoy the sights AND the vino.  Genius.  Okay, back to Venezia.

We began to walk, letting each zig and zag lead us…

crossing bridges, stopping to take a million photos and being in awe of this crazy little city.

Carnival is big in Venezia.  We passed by a few masquerade shops and checked out some masks.  They are pure works of art!  I mean, talk about skills!

Around sunset we made our way to the famous Rialto Bridge where we crammed our way through a billion tourists to get a view of the sunset.  

It was worth the cramming.

We had seen on Rick Steves that in Venice you stand at the bar, have some wine and then choose from an assortment of appetizers – out there they’re called cicchetti (pronounced chee-keh-tee). We stopped at a little place and ordered some wine and cicchetti.  

It was a fun and tasty treat and you felt like you were one of the locals.  We continued our adventure through the alley ways and decided to get some fried seafood at Acqua e Mais (I was not vegan in Italy FYI).  We had passed by this place earlier in the evening and saw a ridiculously long line so we decided to go back.  We went a little crazy with fried verdure (veggies) and calamari, chomping on our fried food as we took in the sights around us.

After we had our fill of food and our legs were as tired as could be we decided to head back to our place.

It was still early so we decided to do a little exploring on the Lido. The Lido seemed way more quiet and definitely less touristy.  We found this cute little bar and decided to have a drink.  Phillip got a Spritz which is THE DRINK in Italy (of course besides wine), but we noticed everyone drinking these orange or red colored cocktails everywhere we went.  I decided on a simple glass of red.

The place was full and the bartenders were awesome.  They knew we were tourists but humored me by speaking Italian to me.  They gave us a bowl of chips which I wasn’t expecting!  Our first taste of chips in Italia and they were salty and oily and perfect!  You can take the girl out of America but you can’t take America out of the girl…just saying.

The place began to shut down around 9pm.  I guess that’s late in Venezia. 🙂 One of the bartenders gave us a plate of little tea sandwiches for free!  It was so sweet.  We left that place with smiles on our faces.

The next morning we woke up early to check out Piazza San Marco.

We lugged our bags once more onto the vaporetto and crossed the water.  Piazza San Marco is a beautiful sight to see.  

Saint Mark’s Basilica is remarkable.

The architecture in the square is gorgeous.

Lugging our bags around wasn’t the most fun.  My husband actually did the lugging; thankfully we just had two carry-ons.  But this allowed us to explore some more before we had to catch our train.

You can seriously get lost here.

It was a gorgeous morning in Venezia.

I loved the alley ways and the canals and bridges; it feels like you’re in a movie, however I didn’t like how crowded it was.  I think spending one more night in Venice would have been the perfect amount of time.  We didn’t go on a gondola ride – they were 80 Euro?!  But we did take some pictures and it was fun seeing other people cruising around in them.  There are plenty of museums in Venezia but we just wanted to experience the culture by the sights, sounds and food.  I think next time I’d like to stay on the main island just for convenience.

Here’s a summary of things to do in Venice (that we did):
1. Wander the canals and alleyways
2. Check out the sunset from the Rialto Bridge
3. Enjoy cicchetti like the locals do
4. Check out the masquerade mask shops
5. Piazza San Marcos

I hope this post gives you a little peak into the magic of Venezia.  My next post will be on Cinque Terre, definitely one of my highlights from our trip.

xo, Jenneke Rose