Worst stop of the trip by far...Venice

The train from Munich to Venice was some of the best sleep I’ve had in days. Slept like a baby with rum in his bottle. Refreshed as ever, we got off the train excited to explore the land of our ancestors, Italia. Though we soon found out navigating the streets was going to be tough, we managed to find our hostel off the map in decent time, only going the wrong way once (if you’ve been to Venice, you can understand how much of an accomplishment that is). But when we arrived to a closed door and an unanswered doorbell at the hostel (7:15am), we learned the hard way that the people here don’t get up as early as we do. A woman downstairs informed us (in Itanglish) that the owner of the hostel doesn’t get to the hostel until 9:00am #sweeeeeet.

2 Hours Later

We put our bags down in the hostel and head out on a quest to find Saint Mark’s Square. I say ‘quest’ because navigating Venice is ridiculous (#1 understatement of the blog so far). Combine the multitude of streets, alleys, and canals with a forecast of scattered showers and you’re in for a hell of a day. Luckily for us, the square is about the only thing to do in Venice so there are signs everywhere pointing you to its’ location. The square itself was definitely the biggest square we’ve seen all trip. Picture a gigantic square of restaurants and old buildings, all surrounding the focal point: Saint Mark’s Basilica.

There was a service going on at the church when we arrived, so as you can imagine it was silent and slam packed with parishioners. As you walk in, the first thing that catches your eye is the elaborate, arched gold ceilings covered with images from what I assumed was the Bible. Although I noticed the architecture was more flawed than what we had been seeing in previous cities (arches weren’t as crisp as the flawless ones we had seen in Spain, Prague, etc), the church as a whole was one of our favorites so far. We walked out of church and it was pouring outside. Taking this as a sign from above that we needed some more of the truth, we walked back in church and sat down for a little of the service.

At this point our mood was slightly dampened (get it?) so we decided to brighten up the day the best way we know how: food…the one thing in Venice that isn’t hard to find.

Remember when I said there were signs to St Marc’s Square because it was the only tourist attraction? Yea well apparently there isn’t a huge draw to come see our hostel and there are no signs that direct you to it. Weird right?

1.5 Hours Later

After dropping our computers, passports, and train passes off at the locker-less hostel for fear of being caught in a rainstorm with no where to take cover, we stumble upon a local pizzeria selling, among other things, prosciutto filled calzones. Sold! Compared to the massive amount of calzones we’ve had in our lives (#1 being MoMo’s in Tallahassee), these ranked somewhere between mediocre and below average. Disappointed with this representation of Venetian cuisine, we decided to find a different restaurant (I’m calling these places restaurants because I don’t have another word but they’re really not restaurants; they’re places that sell food and don’t have chairs or tables for you to eat the food they serve). The “cono farcito” (Italian for “Fancy looking, average tasting calzones”) selection at the next place catches our eye and we decide to give it a try. This calzone cousin rated somewhere between average and ‘ehh, alright I guess.’ Not happy with either of these decisions and caught in a heavy downpour, we decided to sit down in a real restaurant for a glass of wine (and by ‘glass of wine’ I mean a glass of wine and a whole prosciutto covered pizza) #wearefat. The pizza ranked highest out of our lunch exploration with a solid rating of somewhere between average and kinda good.

Disappointed and completely stuffed, we figured it would be best to siesta (they do that here too, not just Spain).

2.5 hours later…

We planned to wake up, explore the city, buy some souvenirs and then stumble upon a reasonable place to eat dinner. The man upstairs, pissed that we left mass early, had other plans. His plan? Torrential downpour. This limited our selection to the closest nearby restaurant, which seemed to be busy so we had high hopes. Now let me describe the first 10 minutes in the restaurant. Walked in to Rhianna’s “Rude Boy” playing loudly around the whole restaurant. Sat down, ordered a bottle of Chianti (Italian wine, very close to tasting better than the wine we had in Spain). Read over the menus with Eminem and Nate Dogg’s “Shake that Ass” (dirty version) playing. We order our food and as soon as the waiter leaves the table, we’re serenaded by the Backstreet Boys “Show me the meaning of being lonely.” I wonder to myself, “Ok, seriously who is in charge of this playlist?!?”

After such a sub-par lunch I had high hopes for dinner. We ordered a bruchetta appetizer (very good), and sausage risotto. Risotto was the one food item I was most excited about before the trip, but from the moment it arrived on the table, I was further disappointed. As we chowed down to the reggae vibes of Sean Kingston and Mavado, we noted that it was overly soupy and tasted far too much like chicken stock. Put it this way, if this was presented on ‘Chopped’ or ‘Iron Chef,’ the judges wouldn’t even have eaten it. For whatever reason, we figured desert would be better, and surprisingly enough it was. We ordered the tiramisu, which we were told was homemade. It was delightful. After dinner it was still raining pretty hard so we figured we’d run and pick up a bottle of wine at the corner store across the street and then run back to our hostel. We run across the street…closed (8:45pm).

Day 2 in Venice started out a lot better than Day 1. The sun was shining and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky…yet. We made it back to St Marc’s Square to see what it looked like without the cloud cover….pretty much the same, except ~6 inches more flooded.

From there we decided to check out a famous gelato place we had read about, “Grom.” Nick’s been to Italy before and I’ve tried gelato numerous times back home, but we both had to admit: best gelato of our lives. It’s perfect texture and creamy richness was easily the highlight of the stop. I thought to myself, “Finally, something that hasn’t disappointed me in Venice.”

After gelato we decided it was time to head to Florence. Only problem was making our way to Venice’s form of public transportation: the water bus. Dead end after dead end was really starting to frustrate us…then it started raining. After about 20 minutes of searching, we finally get there. We notice that no one else is waiting for the bus and don’t understand why until an older gentleman walks up to us and informs us that the bus drivers have gone on strike. “Wow, can this city get any better?” Luckily for us the man turned out to be a professor at the university and was very understanding of our situation. He told us he was heading towards the train station and would show us how to get there. 30 minutes later, I’m sitting on the train finishing up this blog post.

You probably can’t tell but I am really not impressed with Venice…at all.

Note: After finishing the blog, the train employee who handles the tickets asked us if we had signed up for the train’s website: www.getfuckedfor50eurosbecauseyouforgottofilloutyourtrainpassbeforeboardingthetrain.com

Unfortunately, we had not yet signed up and had to fork over 25Euros/person.