The city built on water

Bryce and I couldn’t have felt more clueless than when we stepped off the plane Sunday evening near Venice. It is true that Italian is similar to Spanish, but it is not like lemons to limes, it is much more like lemons to tomatoes (yes, a tomato is a fruit). We had a fairly hard time figuring out what was what. When things were written down, sometimes it was easy to guess, but other than that, it was pretty difficult. When spoken, we could only pull out words here and there that we could recognize. We noticed that our brain automatically went to Spanish when we were spoken to in another language, and we were quickly reminded that we weren’t in Latin America anymore when the person’s face was clueless as if we were speaking some alien language they’d never heard before. This happened more than a handful of times. We found that instead of defaulting to speaking Spanish, it was always better to just say, “Do you speak English?” Most people knew at least a little. Because Venice is such a tourist hot spot, almost all menus and people spoke English there on the island.

We arrived late Sunday night (May 3rd) at the small Venice airport (there are 2 airports in the area: Treviso and Marco Polo). We came in on a small plane; around 50 vivacious Italians and Bryce and I. Even before we took off, we found the Italians pretty entertaining and fun. They were cheering on the flight attendant who explained the safety procedures in Italian, and apparently he was pretty funny because the entire plane erupted in laughter multiple times, of course with the exception of Bryce and I who did not know what was going on.

Once to the airport, we found the information desk, which thankfully, almost all airports have and there is generally someone who understands and/or speaks English. We hopped on a bus and then a taxi to arrive at our hotel. We stayed in Mestre, which was on the mainland, just outside of Venice.

Our first day in Venice was a breath of fresh air. When we stepped off the bus, we just walked through the city and got lost on little cobblestone ways that wind through the city built on water. The taxis are beautiful old Italian boats, the city buses are big boats that they call “vaporettos,” about 50 feet long that could hold around 100 people. There were gondolas with Italian men dressed in stripes with hats (just like you’d imagine) pushing their way through small hidden canals down quiet “streets” of water. It was as if we were in a movie set. It was so different from the bustling of other cities. The part of Venice we first walked through was more residential, and later that day we came to the busier part of town with bustling markets of foods and souvenirs for visitors. We didn’t really pay to go to any museums or cathedrals (many charge to enter because the walls are full of frescoes painted by historical Venetian artists). We strolled over bridges, took hundreds of pictures, drank shots of espresso in a piazza (or plaza), watched people and ate authentic gelato.

The second day, we bought 36 hour tickets to use the vaporettos that can transport you to a number of islands around Venice. I have to admit, I wasn’t very aware of the geography of the area before we arrived. Venice is an island just a 15 minute bus ride over a bridge from the mainland. There are many little islands around the main island of Venice, which are little less touristy and are connected by the vaporettos that run to and from the islands. We walked around more, but around lunch, we decided to go check out another island. We read about Lido island (there are actually two islands, and they are long skinny islands right off of Venice, one is about 6 miles long and the other is about 8 miles long…and barely a mile wide). It was one of our most memorable afternoons of our whole trip. It was similar to Venice in that there were some canals, but it was much more quiet and more residential. On one side sits the Adriatic Sea, on the other, the Mediterranean. There were hardly any tourists and more people riding bikes than driving cars. We rented bikes right away, and rode all the way south, then took a ferry from Lido #1 to Lido #2, and rode to the very southern tip. It was so much fun and so different. We felt like we were just 2 more Italians riding old bikes with front baskets down the main road and alongside the water. We biked more than 25 miles! We got back on the vaporetto to Venice just in time for the sun to set behind the city. We were worn out! Gelato after dinner was a great reward for all that riding.

Our last full day in Venice, we rode down the Grand Canal in a vaporetto, walked around the picturesque streets and San Marco Square and later took the vaporetto to Lido again and went looking for a beach. We found an empty beach on the Adriatic, set our towels out, and took a nap. It wasn’t quite warm enough to wear bathing suits, but it was relaxing all the same. The beach was really interesting-hardly anyone around, but hundreds of cabanas and umbrellas stuck in the sand. It looked like a very popular beach spot for Venetians during the summer months, but when we were there, it was just quiet and empty.

We really enjoyed Venice and would recommend it for a unique vacation. I think one of our favorite things was to trod off the beaten path and do something different like bike riding in Lido. I don’t know if I’ve ever ridden a bike that far. Plus, just to see the city was unreal; the canals are their roads, boats are their cars and old beautiful buildings with intricate details and Venetian style were straight out of a movie.