Home Sweet Hurn: #HurnEuroVacay -- Day 13

We woke up the next morning and walked to the train station to catch our train to Venice. Of course, I fell asleep and woke up in Venice two hours later. The main train station in Venice is right on the island within walking distance to most sights and hotels. However, it is near impossible to navigate Venice. And by near impossible, I mean absolutely impossible. I had printed walking directions from the train station to the B&B that were provided to us through the host. It was supposed to take us 19 minutes to get there. Instead, we wandered around Venice, probably walking in circles, for over an hour. Over an hour with our backpacks on. And it was HOT.

The roads (there are no cars, so I guess they aren’t really roads) twist and turn and wind through the city. It is impossible to pick a road that you think is going in the right direction because that road may just curve right back around and end up heading the opposite way that you actually wanted to go. We thought that our strategy would be to walk along the Grand Canal – well, you can’t. There isn’t a road that just runs along the canal. There may be a road for a little while, but it will just randomly end in stairs down to the water.

All that to say, if you can – TAKE THE VAPORETTO!! The vaporetto is the water equivalent to a bus/subway route. There was a vaporetto stop 100 yards from our B&B, and we most definitely should have taken the vaporetto straight from the train station to our B&B instead of wandering around the city for an hour.

When we FINALLY made it to our B&B, no one was there. Thankfully, some other B&B guests walked up right after and let us in. They were actually friends with the host, so they called him to let him know that we arrived. This B&B was definitely the worst room of our whole trip. The bedroom was okay, and there was actually AC which was so nice. But, the bathroom was down the hall and not clean. The shower was gross, with terrible water pressure, and sketchy hot water.

Nevertheless, Venice is absolutely beautiful! I had heard that the city was dirty and smelled bad because of the water, but this could not be farther from the truth. The water was clean and pretty, and the city was spectacular. We split a pizza for lunch at a nearby restaurant, and then we rode the vaporetto over to St. Mark’s Square.

St. Mark's Square was completely flooded. People were walking around with no shoes on and their pants rolled up splashing through the water. I was not about that. There were also raised platform sidewalks through the square – so all these thousands of people were trying to walk around the square on these five feet wide raised sidewalks.

All the people walking on the raised sidewalks.

We finally made our way to St. Mark’s Basilica. The same dress code as the other churches was enforced here, but thankfully I was dressed appropriately. There were no pictures allowed inside, but the church is covered in beautiful mosaics.

After we saw the church, we decided to get out of that part of town. There were way too many people in one area trying to walk around on tiny sidewalks. Too crowded for us. We took the vaporetto back to our hotel and started to wander around the city. We walked and took in the sites and did a little more souvenir shopping.