My Easter Break started off in a somewhat unorthodox manner…I had decided way back at the beginning of the semester to go to Venice and ended up going there alone last Thursday for the day before taking a night train to Rome that evening. Needless to say, being the worrywart I am and having the travel record I’ve racked up over this semester, I was more than a little apprehensive about traveling alone. Add to that the fact that I had booked a 6:30 am flight out of Stansted Airport (an hour at least out of London) and you’re looking at a very sleepless Wednesday night…
I left the flats around 2am, caught a bus to Victoria Station, and the madness started right away. Nobody could tell me where to catch the National Express bus to Stansted, and I mean NO ONE. Not the station officials, not the policemen roving the street, not the National Express bus drivers themselves (who were utterly unhelpful and rude, boo)…I ended up wandering around the Victoria area at 2:45am completely lost, flipping out, until I finally found the bus stop…across the street and down a block. BOO, Victoria Station. You’re now 2 for 2 in screwing me over.
Got to Stansted, then to Venice, uneventfully…caught a bus to the central train station, bought my night rail ticket right away, and wiped out on the very first bridge I tried to cross. Leave it to the most uncoordinated girl in the universe to embarrass herself by falling down on a pedestrian bridge in Venice…gah! After I dusted myself off I decided that the day needed to start off on a better foot…with gelato. At this point it was about 11:30 so it was the perfect time for a sugar cone of fragola (strawberry) gelato and some people watching right on the train station’s main piazza. It was so crowded, so sunny, so warm and beautiful that everybody was out…what a wonderful start to a day!
After I finished the first of many Easter weekend gelatos, I bought myself a Venice map, which turned out to be utterly useless, and set off for the Rialto Bridge and Piazza di San Marco…St. Mark’s Square. Venice, built on water, was not designed to be navigated on foot, not even by the most intrepid map reader…which I am not. I was lost within about ten minutes, but luckily the gelato sugar-high had me thinking that it was a great adventure and not a great reason to panic. Instead I wound through picturesque, narrow streets with pastel buildings and wrought-iron balconies, crossed side canals on beautiful little bridges, listened to the sound of seagulls and gondoliers and enjoyed the sunshine. I
I totally fell in love with Venice while I wandered around…every new turn in a street was a new and picturesque church, piazza, or canal, and before I knew it I must have stumbled into the shopping district…suddenly every narrow street housed a market or was lined with shop windows. Authentic Venetian masks…cashmere-lined leather gloves…handmade lace…Murano glass…it was so much fun to window-shop and look at everything…and I confess, I may have been really really tempted to make a purchase…but I held out, thankfully!
Finally I emerged from central Venice’s labyrinth of super-confusing streets and found myself staring head-on at the Rialto Bridge and the Grand Canal. What a gorgeous sight! Open air restaurants lined both sides of the canal, there were dozens of gondoliers and vaporettos (water taxis) filling the canal, and hundreds of people out and about. I headed toward the peak of the Rialto and joined the cluster of tourists snapping the stereotypical Venice picture…well, like twenty stereotypical Venice pictures. No shame here. Eventually I got a little too claustrophobic to enjoy the view though and headed onto St. Mark’s.
Again…I got lost about two seconds after I left the main canals. Oops. It took me about half an hour to find St. Mark’s where it would have taken about five minutes had I known where I was going. By this point, it was about 2:00pm as well, so I was a bit stressed thinking I was under a “time crunch.” Haha, the concept of a time crunch is so anti-Italian it makes me laugh now! Anyway, St. Mark’s was finally found, and I spent another half-hour sitting there watching people, feeding the birds (so cliché, so tourist, so much FUN anyway) and trying to get somebody to successfully take my picture with the Basilica of St. Mark’s.
Funny story about Venetians and tourists in Venice: when you ask for a picture in front of a huge historical monument, they don’t seem to understand that you want the monument IN the picture with you. So now I have some lovely pictures of me against a nondescript background in St. Mark’s Square. Oh well!
St. Mark’s on the inside is very, very beautiful and very, very ornate, but also looked like it could use a very, very thorough cleaning. I really enjoyed taking my time going through the basilica, which apparently contains over 4.1 km of fresco and mosaic work…the whole interior was absolutely breaktaking. It took me ages to get through because it was completely mobbed with tourists, was enormous, and also required a lot of attention to detail…so I took my time. It was a really gorgeous church, but couldn’t replace my favorite, Sainte-Chappelle, from Paris. Headed back outside to pouring rain and took a vaporetto back to the train station to lock my bag in a locker before heading to Murano, the island.
Genius that I am, I locked my camera in that locker as well, so I have no photos of Murano, the island famous for its artisan glass. In my handy Venice guidebook it said that no visit to Venice was complete without a trip out to see glassblowers in action and “peruse the assortment of authentic Murano glass,” so I took the water bus across the harbor-type area to the island around 4pm. It was absolutely indescribable…every shop was full of gorgeous, colorful glass. Ornaments, frames, clocks, stained-glass window decorations, chandeliers, sculptures…I was blown away.
Unfortunately, the actual glassblowing tour was way too expensive and took way too long for me to actually take it, but in my wandering around (lost, of course) I stumbled on a smaller factory that was letting tourists in for free to take a look. I jumped ALL over it. It smelled really weird, but it was so completely insanely cool to see how it all happened. The glassblower we watched was making a yellow vase swirled through with red and white, and watching it take shape was one of the prettiest, most impressive displays of craftsmanship I’ve ever seen. After the “tour” was over, I headed to the adjoining shop and bought a few souvenirs…and gifts…then rushed back to the water bus stop to catch the late bus back to the train station. Thank GOD I left when I did…I caught the last water bus back, and I still shudder to think what a catastrophe it would have been to be stranded on the outer island with a train to catch back in the main part!
About 8:30 I arrived back at the train station and settled in for the three-hour wait for the Trenitalia night train to Rome. By now, I was not only completely wiped out and really feeling the effect of a sleepless night before Venice, but I was getting really sick of spending so much time by myself. Traveling is such a social activity that it was really weird and sort of un-fun to spend a whole day on my own…nobody to share my excitement with or to keep me from spazzing when I got lost for the fourth or fifth time, haha! I spent those three tired, cold, sort of lonely hours in the Trenitalia waiting room and eventually got on my night train…where another story starts. This blog is getting way too long though so that’ll be saved for another day! Arrivederci and much love!
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