Sean and I booked on my 21
st birthday. I’m 21,
and that’s the one place I’ve always wanted to see since the Italian Job and
James Bond were filmed there. Sean called, sent me his credit card and I booked
flights. We looked around for hostels, and found one that was really centrally
located, which was perfect as we wanted to walk everywhere rather than waste
money on transportaion. I booked the hostel for both of us, and I thought we
were all set, that was until two days before the trip. I woke up that morning
to an email, thanking me for staying with them at the hostel and asking me to
review my stay. After looking up the flights, I realized that I had booked the
hostel for the dates I had origninally looked at in February…
st birthday present, that’s for sure.
Not good! I knew
I didn’t have enough money on my card to pay for both stays, so the desperate
phone call went out to mom and dad. They were awesome about it and helped me
through it, and I ended up only losing a 15 euro deposit, which was perfect
compared to 150 euro stay. After that chaos calmed down, I began to get excited
about my trip. Sean and I had agreed to spend as little money as possible,
which made me so much more comfortable about going. We left at 4:30 am and
headed to the airport and began our trip. The flight left at 6:30, and we were
in Venice early, but as per usual with RyanAir had to take a bus to Venice
itself. We flew over the Italian Alps, which were incredible. I laughed with
the kid next to me
who lived in Croatia. He had just returned from Dublin,
where he said the beer was “amazing”, but the girls were “shit”. We were
laughing so hard, and I got some pointers from him about how to save money
while we were in Venice. When we arrived in the city, it was a moment of pure
joy for me, as we crossed a bridge over a canal, filled with chris-craft like
boats motoring around as taxis. Our first stop on the way to the hostel was to
a pizza shop where we grabbed slices to go. Once we got to the hostel, they
upgraded us to a private room, which was awesome because it meant that we could
leave our bags there instead of carrying them around the city. The best way to
describe the trip was with one word- food. It was awesome. We must’ve walked
hundreds of miles, but every bridge and intersection I wanted to stop and take
a picture. It was stunning the way the canals just moved through the city. It
seemed however that the only reason the Island was still active was tourism,
especially as we wandered the ourskirts which seemed slightly abandoned. We
spent both days wandering around, and covered so much ground. From various
campos to St. Mark’s Square, where I was more than happy to recite a couple of
Italian Job quotes. We stopped at
a food vendor cart and ordered a couple large
Heinekins and sat in the sun on the lagoon looking out for a couple of hours.
In between stops for Gelato and a variety of other desserts, we decided that we
were hungry, and noticed a meal special at a place that we had passed by that
seemed really good. There was a tripadvisor label on the door too, so it
couldn’t be that bad, right? Wrong. So wrong. We both had pasta with meat sauce
as a main dish, and in the middle I asked Sean what he would guess the meat
actually was. His reply was “cat”. The dessert provided was terimisu, which
I’ve never seen a soggier version of than what was on my plate. I actually
couldn’t force myself to finish it, which really says something.
We got the
check, and there was a 6 euro “cover charge” included. That was the final
straw. We agreed that the next night we would have a great dinner to make up
for it. On the bright side, I don’t think I’ve ever laughed that hard at a
meal. At one point after that we were walking through the canals and passed a
desset shop, and decided to make up for the meal with that. I got a piada nutella
and Sean got a brownie and we split them, that was after gelato of course. We
did a similar routine the next day of wandering all day, and taking a break on
one of the canals this time with an Italian beer watching all the boats and
people pass. We laughed, as we said that we would probably pass on the gondola
ride, being two guys. We
ended up catching the Traghetta, which is a shelled
out version of the gondola that led directly across the canal and back for 2
euro, filled with other people. That night we went to an awesome place on the
canal where we sat outside watching the boats and gondolas pass. We got amazing
meals, and italian meatballs as a side. It certainly made up for it. There was
a cloud lightening storm above St. Mark’s Square that night, which was really
cool to watch. I tried to get pictures of it, but every time it happened I
either missed it or it was blurry from the nighttime. We admired a massive
yacht with multiple boats hanging from it, and ended then night with more
gelato. It had seemed that we had covered everything in Venice, the
Rialto
Bridge, the gelato and meatballs, and everything else. The next morning we had
to return to Ireland, so it was a 4:30 am wake up call. We were out of the
hostel and on the lagoon by 5. We took the water taxi away from the city to the
bus stop, which was perfect, as we were cruising around the lagoon as the sun
rose over the city of Venice, and St. Mark’s Square. It was the perfect way to
end it. We passed the loading docks, where trucks and boats were lined up and
frantically loading for the day’s shipments to the city. We stopped at a pastry
shop at the end of the water taxi line and ordered chocolate croissants and
another one that was amazing, but unfortunately I don’t remember the name of.
We caught the bus to the airport, and were off from there. It was the perfect
21st birthday present.
Lessons From Venice:
1. If you see a restaurant in Italy that looks good, just go for it, it'll be worth it.
2. When in Venice, don't expect any place to be open past 10 pm, except for the few savior gelato shops of course.
3. If there's somewhere you want to go, and there's a way to do it cheaply, just go and figure it out because it'll be worth it!
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