Trip Report: Venice
We set a personal record for last-hour travel planning this time around. We settled on Venice late Saturday afternoon, seeing that flights were unusually open for August. The weather forecast called for some rain, but it was too late to be picky. The method we've worked out for finding hotels involves sorting the listings on tripadvisor by rating, then trying to book the ones that fit in our budget. We couldn't book anything that night, even after putting The Negotiator on the case. We e-mailed a few bed and breakfasts and went to bed. In the morning, we had two responses but still no rooms. I tried calling a few places and got nowhere. One proprietor was kind enough to give me the cell phone number of a friend who apparently had a spare room, but I didn't take her up on it. We finally booked three nights at a hotel near the bus station for about $165 a night via Expedia. We had to ditch plans to grab a travel guide on the way to the airport for lack of time, but at least we weren't going to show up homeless.
Venice is the poster city for car haters, and it is indeed pleasant to walk everywhere for days without dodging traffic. I was amazed at how we could find ourselves in an utterly silent aisle after turning a few corners from the cacophony of St. Mark's Square. Dogs benefit as well, most of them trotting leashless some distance from their masters. Cats, on the other hand, were in short supply.
Water taxis and personal watercraft are the rule for getting around quickly, but we managed to explore on foot as much of the city as appeared interesting, and only boarded a gondola for a requisite photo op and glide around. (Here's a sample of my cinematography and YouTube skills.)
Food was pretty expensive, and mostly oriented toward pizza & spaghetti, but three days was not long enough to tire of good pizza. Surprisingly, places started closing down around ten. We got a bit of old-fashioned Eurotude when we sat down at a pizzeria named Gino's at 11:30 one night. The waiter made it very clear that they were closing at midnight, then refused to replace a flat Coke, insisting that it couldn't be flat because he had just served one to another table. We got the bill without ordering food and shorted them half a euro of the automatic 12% service charge. I tried to make a point of it when he picked it up but he wasn't very interested.
Another fun moment was the chance encounter with a bit of graffiti that had been spotted by a friend years earlier.
Venice is the poster city for car haters, and it is indeed pleasant to walk everywhere for days without dodging traffic. I was amazed at how we could find ourselves in an utterly silent aisle after turning a few corners from the cacophony of St. Mark's Square. Dogs benefit as well, most of them trotting leashless some distance from their masters. Cats, on the other hand, were in short supply.
Water taxis and personal watercraft are the rule for getting around quickly, but we managed to explore on foot as much of the city as appeared interesting, and only boarded a gondola for a requisite photo op and glide around. (Here's a sample of my cinematography and YouTube skills.)
Food was pretty expensive, and mostly oriented toward pizza & spaghetti, but three days was not long enough to tire of good pizza. Surprisingly, places started closing down around ten. We got a bit of old-fashioned Eurotude when we sat down at a pizzeria named Gino's at 11:30 one night. The waiter made it very clear that they were closing at midnight, then refused to replace a flat Coke, insisting that it couldn't be flat because he had just served one to another table. We got the bill without ordering food and shorted them half a euro of the automatic 12% service charge. I tried to make a point of it when he picked it up but he wasn't very interested.
Another fun moment was the chance encounter with a bit of graffiti that had been spotted by a friend years earlier.