A day in Venice!
Hi again! Today we ventured out to Venice for the day and fell in love with it! As soon as our train pulled up I already knew that it was going to live up to, if not exceed my expectations. We wandered through the narrow roads and the many bridges over the canal and just marvelled at how cool it was. A city with no cars, just boats… I’ve never seen anything like it! It was so interesting being in a place where all forms of transportation, from taxis and busses to ambulances and police cars, were done by boat! You either walk everywhere or go by boat and that’s just so different from normal life for me, it’s crazy to think that some people actually live that way!
We were lured into a restaurant (stupid us) because we were promised glasses of champagne on the house. We couldn’t resist free alcohol so we fell into the trap and had some pizza, just to find out that there was a 2,50€ service fee per person just to sit in the restaurant. It’s not that much but we’re cheap travellers so that nonsense is not cool. They also refuse to give you tap water and paying something ridiculous like 4€ for a bottle of H20 that is vital to your body’s survival is just silly. Those Europeans just love to suck up all your money! Like paying 0,50€ just to use a public washroom… What a joke! That’s got to be my least favourite thing about this continent. Why should I have to spend money because I, and every other human on the face of the earth, have a bladder?!
After lunch we headed out to explore some more and saw the main plaza with the big basilica and all that cool stuff but since I’m an uneducated nimrod I don’t even remember the names. I’ve definitely said that before on here and I hate myself for it! I really need to start researching places before I visit them, it would make it so much more rewarding! Especially because I really am fascinated by the history of places we visit, I promise! I just need to start reading up on these unique cities and their famous landmarks BEFORE I get there.
Then of course we had to go on a gondola ride! It was a great experience that I can now check off my bucket list! Well, it wasn’t really on my bucket list before and I don’t actually have an official one at all for that matter, but if I did it would definitely be on there and it would definitely have a check next to it now.
On our way back to the train station we stopped for some gelato and man was it disappointing. When I went to Germany a good 8 or so years ago, I recall having the most amazing banana gelato that actually tasted like a real banana. I was certain that Italy would had that same natural flavour gelato and when I finally found a place with banana flavour I simply had to get it! I even got 2 whole scoops! But it was terrible. It tasted like 5 cent banana candies were thrown into a blender with a boat load of sugar. No real banana taste at all. It was a sad end to a lovely day.
Now we are on the train home to Florence and I’ve fallen in love with train rides. It’s my favourite part of the day, especially after a long excursion of walking and eating bad food. Being able to just plug my earphones in and stare out the window at the beautiful scenery passing by is the best way possible to wind down in my opinion. It also gives me time to reflect and think and sometimes that’s not such a good thing when my mind wanders from how lucky I am to be here to what the heck am I going to do with my life (I have no idea! I don’t want to be a grown up) But I love train rides and we do a whole lot of them so I am not complaining. As I edit this a bit later I would like to add that I enjoy train rides EXCEPT when we get lost and can’t figure out how to get home after a long tiring day. That just happened and we had to take a taxi instead which is frustrating because we need to be budget savvy!
Well that’s it for today, folks! Tomorrow we will most likely be visiting Lucca! Bye bye for now!
Tal