Venice, How I Love you!

On Thursday morning we got up early and headed to Venice. It was about a 4 hour drive from our hotel to the boat that was taking us across. We ho.pped in the car with a backpack filled with things for one night and turned on our Never Lost device. We weren't sure how long it was going to take us to get there, and we also weren't entirely sure what we were doing. We spent the morning chatting about different things, but as soon as we got close, Chris asked me to read an article that he had sent himself. It was basically about how to park outside of Venice. There were a few different options, the cheaper options were parking farther away and taking a longer shuttle ride, or you could park on land that was connected to Venice by a floating road. We decided to go the cheap route and followed the instructions in the article. When we found the parking lot that was mentioned, it was completely empty with no attendants. Chris got out of the car and tried to figure out what was going on, but all the signs were in Italian and it no one was around to ask. We decided to get back in the car and continue to drive down the road. We kept driving until we came up to a small pier that had a tiny little building. There was a man speaking to another group of people right ahead of us and he was speaking in Italian. I was a bit nervous, because I was so horrible with Italian and I was the one closest to the window he would be speaking to us in. I rolled down my window and he walked up to us and immediately said "Do you speak English?" and we were like "Yes, English". He spoke very fluently in English, though he did have a very thick accent. He told us we could park there for free and then they would shuttle us to Venice, then he showed us the pick up times for the next day, the latest one being at 5pm. He also helped us find our hotel on a map and then not too long after he finished talking to us, the shuttle was about to leave. We hopped on the shuttle boat and waited for about 10 minutes or so before it took off. We put away our maps and the shuttle times for the next day, just so we wouldn't get lost or miss our shuttle.

When we stepped off of the boat, I was immediately in love. The first thing I said when I took the first few buildings was "This is soo cool!" We walked along the cobble stone streets and wondered at the beautiful old buildings. They all seemed to be painted in yellows and pinks mostly. Since the canals replace roads, we were almost always in view of the water. On our way to find our hotel, we saw these taxi boats, and thought we might utilize those sometime. We wandered through different alleyways, and over little bridges in search of our hotel. When we finally found what we thought was our hotel, Chris walked in and asked them if they had an Amanda Olson who had reserved a room. They were having a tough time finding anything, so he offered his name as well. No such luck. Chris suggested that I look up the reservation and I had to remind him that we left my phone back at the hotel in case of pick pockets. He handed me his phone and I logged in to my email and found the reservation, I handed the phone to Chris and he walked up to the front desk and showed them. Apparently we were at the wrong Best Western. The concierge at the hotel pointed us in the right direction, they said we would have to get on line B to Santo Marco and get off and our hotel would be close by. I had seen these areas that almost looked like subway stations, but were boats instead of trains.So we had to find our ways to one of those stations. We ended up having to go over some bridges and around some walls. We found our way to one of the stations. We were a bit confused as to how to work the ticket machines and we heard a couple of people speaking English so I told Chris he should ask them. He walked up to them it seemed like they were on a father/daughter trip as the man looked like he was in his 70s and she looked like she was in her 50s. Chris asked the woman if she knew how to get tickets. She said that you can buy them on the boat and asked us to follow her and her Dad. We got on the next boat and bought tickets for the day from the guy on the boat. I'm not sure what to call his position, but basically he shouted out the next station we were coming up to as we arrived at it, and he opened the gates to let people on and off. He also sold tickets on the boat. It actually seemed like kind of a fun job, doubt it pays well, but still it looked kind of fun. Anyways, we basically had to take the boat to the end of the line. Once we made it to our stop, we got off and found our actual hotel. We checked in and brought our things to the room. Our room was tiny and the bed was ridiculously uncomfortable. We decided no to hang around for long. We hadn't eaten lunch yet and it was late afternoon so we had kind of missed the boat on that. We asked the hotel if there was anywhere that was open, they told us there were a lot of restaurants near by, but they were all closed. They mentioned there was a bar open right down the road so we headed over there. We decided to just get some snacks, we grabbed chips, ice cream, and drinks. Chris asked the bartender what they had to drink that was a typical local drink. The bartender, who spoke perfect English said that a Spritz was  their local drink. It is basically wine, liqueur, and soda water. Chris let the bartender pick his and I asked for something on the sweet side. Chris's came out red, and mine was orange. The bartender served us our snacks and drinks and while he was sweeping off the patio he was informing us on where to go in Venice and what restaurants to hit up. We both drank our spritz's and Chris liked mine better than his and decided he would get the same kind I got next time. After we finished our snacks, we tipped and thanked our waiter/bartender since he was all sorts of helpful and decided to get back on the boat subway thingy, and head back into the main part of town. Once we arrived back to the St Marks Square, we realized if we wanted to book any tours we would have to find the place quickly since they closed in about 20 minutes. We ran through Venice trying to find the place.

When we finally found the place, it was a building that really didn't have any markings on it, but Chris rang the doorbell and they let us in and we had to walk up a winding staircase to get to the tiny tour guide office. We got in and we booked some walking tours for the next day. I had wanted to do a picture tour where you dress up in costumes and they take pictures of you around Venice, but they required at least 4 people for that so we weren't able to book that, I was super bummed. After we were all booked and paid for, we used their bathroom, which was a mess and very strange looking.

We decided to wander around Venice a bit and look at some of the shops. I wanted to find Chris a ring that fit him better, I had seen some earlier when we were trying to find the tour guide place, but I couldn't find my way back to that shop. After shopping, we decided to see if we could find the restaurant that the bartender had told us about. On our way, we had a waiter stop us and offer us 10% off if we ate at his restaurant and he would feed us right away, since dinner was about an hour away, we considered this offer. It turned out that the restaurant we were looking for was just down the road and they weren't open until 7pm, so we decided to go with the first restaurant. The waiter seated us right away and we had our pick of where to sit as not a soul was in the restaurant at that time. Chris chose a table that was outside. I immediately noticed that we were in the ugliest place in Venice. The walls were gross and dirty and there was nothing pretty about the spot we chose. We ate dinner, which wasn't that great in my opinion. Chris drank an entire bottle of wine by himself and ate most of the food. A man came while we were waiting for our bill and forced a rose into my hand trying to coax Chris to buy it for me. I don't really like flowers that aren't either in a pot or in the ground because the joy of them only lasts so long and then they die, so I really didn't want the rose, but the man was so pushy and Chris and been drinking so he bought it for me. Unfortunately, when we left the restaurant, I left the rose there by accident, so I enjoyed it for only a very small amount of time. After we left the restaurant, I was hankering for some panna cotta. We started to wander the streets of Venice in search of panna cotta for dessert. We kept checking menus as we walked by and finally we found a place that had it on the menu. When a waiter came over, Chris said, do you have panna cotta? And the waiter replied "Yes" and so Chris said great, a table for two please." The waiter looked at him, confused and said "Just Panna Cotta?" Chris replied "Yes" The waiter shook his head and said, "Just a second" He disappeared inside the building and came out a few seconds later to say that he would seat us in 5 minutes. We said "Are you sure?" and he said "Yes, just give me 5 minutes". After less than 5 minutes had passed he sat us next to an English couple. We ordered our panna cotta and decaf coffee and lemonciello. The Panna cotta was okay, but nothing compared to the amazing stuff we had in Cinque Terre. Chris started to chat with the British man next to him and we started to chat with the two of them. They were so fun. They were leaving on a cruise of the Greek Islands the next day. They were telling us about their children and grand children, and talking about the different stages of life, especially after they heard that we were just married. The woman, whose name was Cristine, but went by Cris, told me that children are a must and they change you life, but for the better. She was very convincing. We chatted about all sorts of things and the British man, whom we cannot re-call the name of, kept buying us more Lemonciello, I think he bought us 6 in total. Cris said that on her honeymoon she stole things from the places they stayed at as a memory of their trip, and she felt I needed to steal the Lemonciello glass. She was hiding it for me in her lap right before we all left and her husband was like, "We are not stealing a glass". I agreed, I'm not really one for stealing, I don't like getting in trouble, besides my mother in law bought us very similar glasses to the ones we used that night when we returned. So it all worked out. Cris was quite the character! We spoke about the people who were coming over from Syria and how the English weren't ready to take them in, and the husband told us about his travels to the US and how he felt that there were two kinds of Americans, those who travel and those who don't. He said he feels like the we have all we could every want in our country without ever leaving it so he feels that is why some Americans don't travel. I thought that was an interesting theory and Cris said that she felt that we were lucky to have everything we could ever want or need within our own country. I guess I never really thought of it that way, which is why I feel the need to travel! We left them to get ready for their cruise and headed back to our hotel. It was far later than we thought and the boat subway thingys weren't running very often and both Chris and I had to pee very badly. It was one of those moments where I wished I were a guy. Anyways, so we eventually found our way back to the hotel, when we got up to our room, we realized that we needed to put the key in to the lights to get them to work. Once we did, they kept shutting of and making the room pitch black. This was freaking me out especially while I was trying to go to the bathroom. Once finished, I came out and started to troubleshoot the light situation. I figured out that the card was in upside down and once I put it in correctly, the lights stayed on. As I got ready for bed, I searched the room for bugs as I always do, in any room and found two giant Daddy Longlegs in both corners on either side of the bed on the ceiling. I pointed them out to drunk Chris who at first didn't seem like he was willing to kill them for me. Well then he realized he was married to me and better help me out. Unfortunately his drunk self isn't the greatest bug killer and he missed both spiders, he had to smack at them both several times and they both fell to the ground, but only one of the bodies was found. Because of this my sleep was very broken, I woke up every hour or so checking to make sure where wasn't a spider in my face. It was a fun night!

The next day we packed up our stuff, checked out of the hotel and then left our back pack with the front desk so we could explore a bit more before our boat taxi picked us up. We had a lovely free breakfast at the hotel with mini jams, and GF rice cakes, fruit, eggs, and meat, and of course coffee. After our tummies were full, we hopped back on the boat and found our way to where we were able to meet our tour guide for the walking tours. We toured Saint Mark's Square and St. Mark's Basilica. Both were interesting and beautiful, but I was far more interested in our second tour, which was of he Doge's palace. We got tons of pictures of both places and a few videos. It was so interesting to learn about the Doge and how he was only the face of the government and had no real power. He was able to live at the palace with his wife and was the doge for life.

After the tour we decided to do a canal tour and Chris was trying to get us on our own canal for a romantic ride, however, the canals were crazy busy and there was a group of four that was trying to find two more people to ride with them to make it cheaper. I told Chris that I was fine with sharing. I mean it would have been nice to have our own ride, but seriously, they were so busy. We ended up sharing the ride with some young guys from Brazil and a girl who didn't talk to us much. They spoke English so we got to know them a little bit. We all took turns taking pictures of each other while our Gondola driver spoke in Italian to someone on his cell phone. The other people in our boat kept moving, it was making me nervous, and at the same time that I almost said something, the Gondola guy yelled at them and told them to stop moving for just one second. He was very rude and I did not like him at all. But the Gondola ride was still nice and we got lots of great photos. After the ride we needed to get back to the hotel to grab Chris's Backpack and then head over to catch our taxi back to the main land. Unfortunately we were running late. The worst part of Venice was Chris pushing my physical limits to try and make it to the damn taxi. Well we definitely missed it and once to the pick up point I decided to sit for a while to catch my breath.

After my breath was completely caught up, we took it nice and slow to the bus station where we were able to get tickets, we had to stand the whole way, but we made it back to the first parking lot we had stopped at. Then we got to walk for a mile to get back to our car. We were very happy to see our car and even happier to see our condo and for some bug free sleep in a comfy bed. Regardless of our hardships, I loved Venice and will go back before it goes under water.