“It is the city of mirrors, the city of mirages, at once solid and liquid, at once air and stone“, Erica Jon.
I had actually been to Venice once before, during the winter of 1994. I was based in Cyprus withe the British Army and had been posted to a unit in Germany. As we had a car to take back, we decided to take it as a bit of a holiday and got a ferry to Greece. We then drove across Greece and picked up a ferry to Italy. We stayed outside of Venice in a place called Padova back then.
My lasting memory was of how cold I was! I have, somewhere, a picture of me in St Mark’s Square, but can’t recall too much of the place other than the cold. In fact, I recall how I even wore most of my clothes to bed while in Padova! It probably wasn’t that cold, but I was coming from Cyprus.
There were no such complaints from me this time in Venice. It was firmly in the mid to high 20s, and was even very humid on our last night there.
If you read my last blog on Italy, you’d know that Josanne and I had spent 3 days in Rome after a work trip to Paris. Leg 2 of our holiday was 3 days in Venice (well, in reality it was just over two days as the first day was far from a full one given our mid-afternoon arrival). It was enough for what we wanted to do, and I definitely wanted to create memories that didn’t revolve around the cold! I’m happy to say that I was thoroughly successful in that aim!
We decided that rather than fly from Rome to Venice, we’d get the train. It took around 4 hours on a fast train (and at times it was doing 250km/h so it was genuinely fast). On arriving in Venice, we took a shared water taxi to our hotel, the Palazzio Veneziano, which was great as the drop off point was right outside of the hotel.
The hotel itself was great – I’d recommend spending some time at the bar as the bar manager was superb at explaining some of the drinks he made – including an award-winning margarita. For any whisky or gin connoisseurs, he had a great array of options to try!
We arrived in Venice in the mid-afternoon. We had to wait around for around 25 minutes for our shared water taxi, but once we got in, we were the first ones to get out and it only took around 25 minutes to get there.
As we’d only come up on the train, there was no need to freshen up on arrival so we just put our cases in the room, spoke with the concierge about where we were on the map and set out to explore. The concierge was incredibly helpful, providing multiple suggestions for where was worth walking to.
As with every holiday we take, walking is an integral part of what we do. We’d decided that we’d head across to St Mark’s Square and see what there was to see while we were there.
The walk only takes 15-20 minutes. Or it would if you didn’t stop to look around all the time! We probably got a little better at that as we took subsequent walks.
Day 1 – Finding our way to St Mark’s Square
So after putting our luggage in the room and donning some comfortable footwear, we set off for St Mark’s Square. It took longer than 15-20 minutes to get there, but most of that was down to us stopping and looking around.
It didn’t take long for photo opportunities to start appearing, as we had to get an old wooden bridge across the Grand Canal. I think we ended up hanging around there for around 10 minutes. As we had to walk across it every time we went into central Venice, we got better though.
From here, we eventually managed to carry on and via a few side streets, somehow popped out at the far end of St Mark’s Square.
There was only a small queue for the Campanile di San Marco (or St Mark’s Campanile), so we joined it and jumped in the lift so that we could have a look at Venice from on high. It wasn’t expensive and it was worth it.
From here, it was back to exploring the St Mark’s area of Venice, which included some picturesque canals and, of course, gondolas.
Day 2 – Lost but not really lost
Day 2 was supposed to commence with a walking tour of the city. Some friends had recommended a tour guide, and she was supposed to show us around the parts of Venice that tourists don’t usually see, using her knowledge of the city to show us a different side of it.
She was supposed to pick us up at 10.30am. Alas, when she hadn’t arrived by 11am, we managed to get in touch with her. She’d “forgotten” but said that she could meet us at 4pm instead. We declined and decided that we’d do our own tour of Venice. We figured that if we didn’t use Google Maps, we could just see where our noses led us. We’d stop somewhere for lunch and then head back to the hotel to clean up before dinner.
While the plan was to get off the beaten track, there were also some things that we did want to see, such as Rialto Bridge.
But the rest was to be left to chance.
I probably stopped and took a photo of just about every narrow street, every narrow canal and every bridge over the water!
However, I also took photos of people’s washing (is that weird?), empty cafes that were just awaiting throngs of hungry people to arrive for some of the Italian delights that they sold (or maybe just an Aperol Spritz, which seemed to be the tourist’s drink of choice in this beautiful city). I tend to take lots of photos and then delete the ones that I don’t like. Getting lost (but not really lost) meant that we saw lots of things that I found exceptionally interesting.
This first group of photos don’t actually include any water:
Bridges. There are plenty of the around Venice!
And lastly, I managed to get some pictures of waterways from the Grand Canal to some of the narrower ones, not forgetting some of the gondola jump on / jump off points:
I think that we must have walked close to 20km on day 2, so headed back to the hotel, had a nice shower, a pizza by the water and then retired to the hotel bar to try a multitude of gins, whiskies and even threw in a margarita for good measure! I even found a selfie on my camera the next morning!
Day 3 – Murano, Torcello and Burano
Murano
I’d booked a relatively cheap tour of the islands of Murano, Torcello and Burano. It came with a guide, although to keep the cost down, the guide was only on the boat and she’d tell you what to look for and expect on each of the islands. It was a half day tour, but you only spent around 50 minutes on each island.
First stop was Murano, world famous for glass blowing. We stopped there for the obligatory demonstration, followed by a look around the shops before jumping back on to head for Torcello.
Murano glass is very expensive, but Josanne managed to find a couple of cheaper trinkets to bring back.
Torcello
Torcello is one of the oldest inhabited islands, but I’m sure that the guide said there were only around 5 permanent inhabitants on the island. It was originally a fishing port. It does have an ancient 7th century cathedral and a bridge with no sides that dates back to the 15th century. There were some cafes by the side of the canal to eat at, but there were large queues at these, so we didn’t really have time to grab a bite to eat after we’d looked around.
Burano
The third and final stop was one that I’d have gone back to again if we’d been staying for longer. There were more shops, cafes and restaurants here. While we stopped for a very quick bite to eat, most of our time was spend just looking around. We almost lost track of time and had to rush back to catch the boat back to Venice.
While Burano is famous for its lace, it was the beautiful houses in a myriad of different colours that caught my attention. This was easily the prettiest of the three islands we visited and if you have the time, it’s worth spending more than just 50 minutes on!
Fifty minutes flew past here and with all of the recent walking (and maybe the late night in the bar on the previous evening), we both had a snooze on the boat on the way back.
Once we got back to Venice itself, there was the opportunity for a few more photos on the way back to the hotel. We also took a walk to discover where we would get the water bus to the airport the next day as we were flying back to the UK for our trip to Scotland. When it comes to writing that one up, I’m going to have great difficulty in choosing the photos!
So, what were my thoughts on Venice? Well firstly, it wasn’t freezing like it was in November 1994, so that was a great start. It’s a fascinating place to look around, and very easy to fall in love with. It must be a photographers dream as there are so many opportunities to just stop and take photos.
It is busy, but they are putting a tourist tax on, one supposes, to try to limit the large crowds who are evident at every turn in the city. I suspect it’s far less busy outside of the summer months though.
Our 2-3 days there felt just about enough. Sure, I’d have liked to have had our walking tour, but we didn’t do a bad job ourselves I thought. A bit more time on Burano would also have been nice, and I’d have skipped Torcello to be able to do that. If I lived in Europe, it would definitely be a great place for a long weekend. Alas, from New Zealand, it’s a little bit far away for that!
Helpful hints
- Wear comfy, loose clothing and be prepared to walk – you will see so much by doing that.
- There are plenty of places to eat and drink – and so many gelato stores! Do try the gelato, it’s superb. Our favourite was the bitter cherry!
- Getting to the train station / airport can be very pricey (they wanted 140 Euros when we were there). Getting one of the water buses is much cheaper, although it does take longer. We opted for a shared water taxi one way (to “get the experience”), but then just took the water bus to get back to the airport.
- If you get the chance to visit some of the outer islands – do! It wasn’t expensive to do so. I’d suggest finding a way to spend longer on Burano.
- It’s not hard to find your way around Venice, but it’s also quite easy to get lost. It’s actually fun being lost and just exploring. You’ll get lots of photo opportunities by doing this! And it’s easy to find your way back onto the main drag.
Kevin Blyth 