#HurnEuroVacay -- Day 13 - Venice

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.

The Grand Canal

These calendars were sold everywhere through Italy. It is a calendar of hot Roman priests. Hilarious.

After a little nap at the hotel that afternoon, we went out for dinner at a restaurant along the Grand Canal. 

We are going to Europe!

For the past 7 months, I have been diligently planning the Hurns’ DREAM VACATION! This fall, we will be traveling to Europe, and I cannot believe that our departure date is so soon! I have done all of the planning and booking myself, and I did a ton of research through travel blogs. So, I decided that I would share my Europe trip planning tips and steps.

1. Narrow down your options.

Planning a trip to “Europe” is super daunting because Europe is a huge place with so many wonderful cities! Our first step was to make a list of all of the places/cities that we were interested in. This list included: Paris, Rome, Florence, Venice, Madrid, Barcelona, Prague, Switzerland, Vienna, Ireland, Tuscany, London, and Athens. Visiting all of these places would be impossible in one short trip.

I read some travel blogs, articles, and travel sites to see some sample European itineraries. I marked the places on a map to see what paths made sense geographically. I researched train and plane schedules and prices to see which cities were easy to travel to.

Paris was a no-brainer. I have already been there. I knew that I wanted to go back, and I wanted to take Jeff to see my favorite city. Italy was a must, but I just didn’t know what specific cities we would go to. Ireland was far away from our other destinations, as was Greece and Spain.

After a ton of thought and research, I narrowed it down to Paris, London, Italy (Rome, Florence, Cinque Terre, Venice).

2. Pick your dates and book a flight!

Due to our work schedules, we knew that a typical summer vacation was not possible. (Jeff’s super busy time at work is June & July.) So, we first started looking at traveling in August. Due to some luck and Pinterest, I discovered Norwegian airlines. Norwegian airlines only flies out of a couple of airports in the U.S., but their prices are great! I once found a one-way flight to Paris for $169! [I’m still mad at myself for not booking that flight immediately.] After some procrastination, the prices for August flights rose too high, so we started looking at September. September actually seems like the best month because (hopefully) the weather will be nice, but it is not peak tourist travel season.  Plus, if you travel around Labor Day, you get an extra free day off work!

We made list after list of available flights overseas and return flights back to the U.S. We compared dates, prices, possible itineraries, and travel times. Finally, we decided to fly into Paris, and fly home from Barcelona. [The flights from Barcelona to U.S. were so much cheaper, that it made sense to make an extra stop in Europe to save money on the return flight home.]

We booked our overseas flights directly from the Norwegian Airlines site, and our trip was now official!

3. Make an itinerary.

Because geography, I knew that we would visit Paris and London, and then move over to Italy. However, I had no idea which order to visit the Italy stops, nor did I know how long to spend in each city.

We had narrowed our Italy stops down to Rome, Florence, Venice, and Cinque Terre. I created a calendar in Excel with the dates of our trips, and played around with different itineraries. I knew that I wanted to stay in Paris for at least 3 full days, but I thought that 2 days was sufficient for London. So, I went ahead and marked those on the calendar.

I made separate itineraries for different possibilities, comparing travel time, costs, and accessibility. For instance, flights from London to Rome were more frequent and way cheaper than flights from London to Venice. There is a direct fast train from Florence to Venice. So, I settled on this order: Rome, Cinque Terre, Florence, Venice.

4. Book hotels.

From booking our regular New Year’s Eve trips, I had some of favorite sites for hotels/apartments/houses. I checked Airbnb, VRBO, Wimdu and of course the regular Expedia, Hotels.com, Kayak, etc.

Paris: Apartment booked through VRBO in the Latin Quarter

London: London was by far the hardest stop to find a place to stay. London is exponentially more expensive than any of our other stops. I ended up booking a budget hotel with Tune Hotels. I am comparing our room to a cruise ship room – just a bed and a bathroom, no window. We only have two days in London, so I am sure that we will be busy running around the city. As long as it is clean, we should be good to go.

Rome: Apartment booked through VRBO

Cinque Terre: We will be staying in the town of Vernazza in a bed and breakfast booked through Airbnb.

Florence: Apartment booked through Airbnb close to the main squares

Venice: Bed and breakfast booked through Airbnb

Barcelona: We will only be in Barcelona for one afternoon, and our flight home leaves at 8AM the next morning. We decided to stay in an airport hotel, so that we can be sure to make it to the airport on time.

5. Start booking trains and flights.

One of my favorite things about Europe is the ease of travel. I absolutely love trains! We booked our train from Paris to London through Eurostar. I used the Trentalia website to book most of our trains through Italy. I have read great things about the Italo train line and wish that we could have used them more. Italo only stops in certain cities, and only in certain order. We are using Italo for our Florence-Venice train. We will be flying RyanAir from London-Rome and Venice-Barcelona.

6. Now for the fun stuff!

Now it is time to start looking at fun things to do! Read blogs. Read TripAdvisor. Look at Pinterest. Make sure that you look at hours/dates because some museums are closed one day of the week. For instance, the Louvre is closed every Tuesday. Wouldn’t it be a huge bummer if you showed up on your last day in Paris, and the museum was closed?? If museums/attractions allowed online ticket ordering, I booked things ahead of time. No sense in wasting my time abroad waiting in line after line. Some places pretty much require reservations months ahead of time – the Accademia Gallery in Florence (home of Michelangelo’s David). I tried to book our tickets to the Eiffel Tower the day that they became available, and they had already sold out. Guess we will be waiting in line for that one.

We are so excited for our trip. I hope to continue blogging throughout our trip to keep everyone updated on our travels!