On April 23rd my Spring Break started and I flew from Alicante to Venice, Italy. For the first time I was truly out of my comfort zone knowing absolutely no Italian. After the plane landed we went to go find our hostel, which was this really nice campsite outside of the city. We ended up having a little trailer with two beds that worked really well with a restaurant and a little grocery store, which would supply us with dinner for the four days we were there. Right off the side of the campsite was a little ferry that took us into Venice everyday and then took us right back at night. The first day in Venice we just walked around and enjoyed the beauty of this quaint little city. Then while we were walking around right before lunch we came across a family that wanted to split a gondola ride because they are quite expensive and we were definitely lucky to have that opportunity, it was by far the best way to experience the city with all the twists and turns that make Venice the maze that it is.
On the second day in Venice we went for a walk around town with the ultimate goal of finding St. Marco's Plaza the centerpiece and most well known thing in Venice besides the gondolas. On the way we stopped at a basilica of health which was on the opposite side of the island from St. Marcos and you could actually see the entrance to St. Marcos from there it was a really pretty church but it was under construction. One thing that we learned about Venice that I did not previously know was that there are 120 churches on the little island; so on every corner there was a new one for us to check out and see. After the Basilica we made our way to the famous Plaza and when we got there it was a giant plaza with a huge bell tower tons of people and pigeons with a 1000-year-old Basilica at the end of it. We got in a long line for a quick walk through because the actual basilica was having mass when we got there. We continued to wander around for a while and found a few more nice churches and had a good pizza lunch. We headed back to the campsite at about 3:30 took a nap and then hung out there till we went to bed around 11 or 12 every night.
On the third day we just went back into the city and potentially got ourselves lost cause that was our plan it’s the best way to see a city that is as small as Venice. We wandered all the way to the opposite shore of the islands a walk that surprisingly only took about 20 minutes, that really showed us how small Venice was walking wise. We wandered till we found a few more highlights a couple really big churches then we ate pizza for dinner again because well it was the cheapest thing to eat and the pizza was delicious in Italy. After lunch we wandered around again and ended back up near St. Marcos. However this time when we came in we found the bridge of sighs which is a bridge that used to connect a palace and a jail. They used to say that when prisoners were brought into the jail they rarely came back out and when the boats would take in one of the last things these people saw was this bridge and they used to shout out for their families or for a quick painless end and that’s how it got its end. Also in one of Madonna’s music videos she floats under this bridge and that is another thing that it is known for.
The last day in Venice was really just more of the same wandering around checking out the really cool canals and doing some people watching which is always fun. We got some gelato and really enjoyed that it was fantastic. We headed back early with the intention of going back at night however we were just tired and didn’t really want to take the ferry again until the next day when we were going to leave. On the day that we flew to Paris we spent a few hours in Venice first and just sat around but since we had our luggage with we didn’t really want to do very much because the bags were kind of annoying to carry around so we went to the airport and headed off to Paris for the second part of our trip.
Bridge of Sighs with dumb painting around it
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