I flew back to Munich the day after Christmas and then almost immediately hopped on a night train to the town just before Venice, where Katie and her family picked me up. They were staying in a very nice "villa", aka the top floor of a guy's house, about an hour outside of Venice. We went to the super fancy outlet mall there and looked at all the things we couldn't afford and took a little trip to the beach. It was wet and misty and the beach town we drove through looked deserted for winter, some of the windows were boarded up and it was Sunday so everything (FOOD) was closed until 6 pm. The beach had a small playground and we had a nerf football, so it was still fun.
The not fun part (other than the no-food situation) was the explosion of roundabouts in Italy, which combined with our super slow GPS to create an almost sure recipe for disaster. I think we only drove in circles/the wrong way four times :)
The next day we ventured into Venice on the train. The view from the bridge was really neat. The city is literally just an island of buildings with canals in between, it changes immediately from water to cement foundations and city blocks, aka the maze part. The main square that we were going to, St. Mark's (Piazza San Marco), was on the opposite side of the city. Luckily, every corner you come to has an arrow labeled with the direction you have to go to get to the Piazza, so we walked along about halfway there, passing all the tourist shops of Venetian masks and glass, then veered off for some food (surprise!).
This is down the alley from the pizzeria we ate at, which is on the right:
It was super sunny outside during the middle of the day, but since the buildings are all so tall and close together, it doesn't ever reach the ground, except in the bigger plazas.
This was the GIANT calzone I ordered:
It was delicious, but so massive I couldn't finish it. I think our waitress was a little confused at our surprised exclamations when she brought them out.
After lunch we wandered along towards the Piazza, through all the alley ways and sudden open plazas and over numerous canals until we emerged in the Piazza San Marco. It was dusk at this point, but here is most of the Piazza:
Behind this frame is a church, but they were doing construction on most of the dome so you couldn't see much. To the left of this picture is the water front. We walked along this for a few minutes, then wandered through a small park (the first grass we found!). Here's the waterfront, my most favorite part:
And me with some mint gelato, courtesy of Katie :)
The waterfront is what got us into trouble. We walked up the road from the Piazza and were deceived by this romantic looking, cute little alley way along a canal:
Beware! A sure trap for all people not raised on Venetian ground. I'm convinced they all have a weird magical ability that allows them to get around without getting completely lost, which as you might have guessed, is exactly what we did. At the time, we seemed to be following a group of other tourists on a main pathway back to the center section of the city.
Some shots from this time, while still in my starry-eyed, romantically lost state:
This semi-lost meandering changed to us walking around alone in the dark in an obviously non-tourist section of the city. We even passed a butcher and a fruits and vegetables shop, which were noticeably absent from our wanderings earlier. After running into multiple dead ends at canals, we took up the strategy of walking into every single corner shop we came to and asking which way the main path was. This eventually led to the back of this church:
The front of the church was next to the main path, which we were able to follow back to the train station with only a little hesitation. A victory shot of the canal in front of the train station:
We caught our train with four minutes to spare! Pretty successful, I'd say. Overall, it was a marvelous day spent in a beautiful city. Venice is definitely still on the list of cities I loved, though it appears nowhere on the list of cities fun to get lost in. Munich still holds that distinction, and probably always will. Vienna might be a close second, but I'll get to that later :)
