A Travelogue: Venice

Venice is not exactly what I thought it would be. The city was very dirty, had quite a stench, and really was not very nice. The fact that the people there weren't too kind really struck me; you would think that the people in a city which has a tourism based economy would be nice to outsiders, but this generally wasn't so. They weren't outwardly mean, per se, but they were not very helpful, and I felt like they were trying to rip us off every chance there was. Here's an example. Not too far where we were staying was a large open air fruit and vegetable market. Everything there looked quite delicious, so we decided to buy some peaches and strawberries. As we were inspecting the peaches, trying to find the ones we liked best, the owner of the stand walked up and, after a moment of staring, angrily demanded that there was no touching. Who has ever heard of a fruit stand were you can't choose what you want?! After we apologized and told him we wanted two peaches, he hastily grabbed a couple out of the bunch and shoved them in the bag for us. Upon inspection, as was doomed to happen, one was bruised and cut (it was still very tasty). Luckily the man in charge of our section of the bed and breakfast, Ali, was a very cheery, albeit somewhat scatter brained, dude who turned out to be kind and helpful. The rest of Venice could take a lesson from him.

I found Venice to be interesting mainly because it seemed to lack everything that a normal, functioning city would need to have. There weren't any office buildings to be found, and in two days of wandering the city by foot, we only found one supermarket. And at that, after working in supermarkets for what seemed like forever, I noticed nothing “super” about it. It consisted of three and a half aisles, and for all the crap they tried to stuff on the shelves, there wasn't much variety at all. We didn't see a single hospital, and we covered about 2/3 of the main island over the course of our 3 days. There is no structure or organization in navigating the canals and sidewalks that make up the main pedestrian thoroughfares. The travel book I bought said that you're better off just heading in the direction of what you want to find than trying to follow the sometimes marked names of canals and “calles”, the sidewalks along the canals. This fact alone blew our minds when we first arrived, causing us to take almost two hours to walk to our hostel after we got off the train. The “getting lost and wandering to find your destination” method of navigation works, though; it took no longer than thirty minutes to reach the train station from our bed and breakfast when we left, and we didn't go the same way we came.

Everything in Venice was super expensive. Example: Heidi bought a pair of nail clippers, the cheapest brand we had seen in Germany, and paid 3.50EUR. That's a little under five dollars for a single pair of stainless steel nail clippers. I have no idea how Venetians can afford to live there, since their main source of income seems to be hyperexpensive, meaningless baubles sold to tourists and incredibly expensive gondola rides (30 minutes could cost you more than 50EUR!). It was ridiculous. For our Europe-on-a-budget trip it was highway robbery.

To make things worse, we thought we had to switch around our trip itinerary a bit to find train reservations from Venice to Paris, but we found out differently in a very stressful way. When we were in Munich making our reservations, the guy (technically a travel agent, I guess) at the Eurostar Reiseburo helping us did not speak very good English. Our original plan was to leave Venice on the 19th, and when we asked him for reservations, he said it was not possible, and showed us the screen saying that there were no reservations left. This wasn't too big of a hassle, as we were able to reserve the next day (the 20th) and call the hostel in Paris to push our arrival back a day and it was no big deal. Fast forward to boarding the train from Venice to Paris, and we find out that the reservations the agent had printed for us had expired the day before; even though he said that there were no reservations available for the 19th, we somehow ended up with one. Since he had made it very clear that our reservations were for the 20th, we thought nothing of it and didn't double check the ticket stub. So as it turned out, we had to shell out another 50EUR reservation fee to ride the train we had boarded. Both of us thought for a moment that we were going to be stranded in Venice, because if the train didn't have an open cabin, then were going to be screwed. Thankfully, we were able to secure two bunks, but it was stressful nonetheless. I learned two lessons today: 1) Make sure your travel agent has a fully functioning grasp of English, and 2) DOUBLE CHECK YOUR TICKET! - no matter what your agent says.

I'm currently writing this on the train out of Venice, and I'm sure I can speak for both of us in saying that I'm very glad we're leaving. Here's to Paris being a lot cooler, and hopefully cheaper too!

** I apologize for the tome I just wrote, I'm kinda bored on the train and writing provided a great way to kill the time. Hope this wasn't TL;DR (too long; didn't read) for some :D