After much trouble on wrong exits and long walks and 1-hour drive to the Beauvais airport in the middle of nowhere early in the morning, we settled in our seats and dreamed our way to a Venetian afternoon. We arrived at the small Italian airport also in the middle of God-knows-where around 12pm and caught a bus for another 1.5 hour drive to the city. After driving over the long bridge leading to Venice, we were presented with an ugly high rise car park on the right side which looked just like any other car park in any other city and gave no indication of the classy, timeless Venice we were supposed to be in. However, just a short walk over a small bridge, it changed immediately. We couldn’t believe our eyes! We have read so much about Venice but nothing, nothing could prepare us for the beauty of seeing it for the very first time. Everywhere we turned and looked there were fabulous architectures. Apartments, palazzos, bridges, churches, all stood motionless in time, floating on the canals.
Looking at our guide book to give us an indication of where to find our hotel, I was so very sure that the hotel was just a few hundred meters from the bus station, feeling certain we’d have no problem finding it. But soon we realized that Venice is most definitely a city to get lost in. After forty-five minutes walking with the twist and turns at every junction, we were by now completely LOST. I think we passed the same streets for about 5 times.
We tried asking a guy where we should be going. He roughly pointed out where to go. So we continued walking, another forty-five minutes went by and we were still lost. We could be anywhere now, damn these small alleys! Then there was this lady who knew the hotel. Literally, five minutes later we strolled into the hotel, exhausted. The hotel was a lovely surprise, overlooking one of the many smaller canals. But a few minutes later we found out that that wasn’t to be the end of it … The hotel screwed up our reservation! I felt like throwing away my bag in frustration, thinking that we were going to be stuck looking for accommodation all day. Thankfully the guy at the reception referred us to the hotel near the bus station which was actually further away from the center of town and double the rate. But we had no choice. So here we went again, back to the bust station, having eventually done a full circle looking for this hotel, Marella.
We head out later for dinner and wandered around, heading down to the Grand Canal. But again, this was really easier said than done. We were constantly retracing our stops, backtracked and tried another direction to get to our destination. Now that we had no worries about the time, the whole experience was actually fun. We walked around the narrow streets and admired the buildings that must have been more that a hundred years old.
We made our way to the Ponte dell’Accademia, right in front of the Galleria dell’Accademia which is where they house some paintings by Da Vinci and other painters of the Venetian schools. But, hell if I knew that!
We took the vaporetto, the water bus, to the Piazza San Marco. Now the Piazza is something else. You see, all those movies set in Venice, now they just started to click in my head.
The gondolas were interesting, tiny as they were, they did carry people around on some pretty good waves. How much was the price of romance? A hundred good euros would do.
The next morning it was raining hard, but we manage to get to the Piazza again and line up to enter the Palazzo Ducale. In the afternoon, we got a lunch to go and took advantage of the sun, coming out slowly after the rain. Took a side street off the bank of the Canal Grande, jumped a fence, and made ourselves comfy on the dock of someone’s house. There we were, having our own canal-side lunch, watching vaporetti passed by, not really believing that we finally made it here, and still couldn’t believe how beautiful Venice was. It just stood there in time.
After lunch we returned to the Piazza, took coffee underneath the pillar of San Marco, then we strolled along the quay towards Castello on the other end of the city. The sun gave us the perfect weather for a great vista across the lagoon. Venice is really the place to just sit back, sip a glass of spritz and watch people, boats and time pass by.
Mmmmm … when will we see Venice again? I sighed for the happiness money can buy …
tequila shots for the soul 