My fascination with Venice goes back to somewhere in middle school. We had been given an assignment to chose any picture and caption from The Mysteries of Harris Burdick and write a story based on it. Ultimately, I ended up writing two because I couldn’t decide which one I liked more, but one of them was a picture of a cruise ship heading into a far-too-small canal titled Missing in Venice. Its caption read ‘Even with her mighty engines in reverse, the ocean liner was pulled further and further into the canal.’ All that to say, since we were going to be in Italy, I really wanted to make it to Venice.
We took a RailEurope train from Roma Tiburtina to Venezia S. Lucia – a 3.5 hour train ride for $70. Because we planned things poorly, our hotel in Rome was very close to the Roma Termini station, but not very close to Tiburtina, so we ended up taking a taxi to Tiburtina (and I left my only sweatshirt in the hotel lobby – lesson to always double check not only the room but the lobby as well before leaving!) Then, we took a water bus from the train station to somewhere along the main canal, which was something else we didn’t factor into our original plans and that I therefore don’t have the cost to. I do know that water transportation in Venice is quite expensive, and that we used it as little as possible, opting to walk otherwise. Walking in Venice, however, was much more difficult than we expected it to be, not because of distance, but because Venice is made up of lots of very short, narrow streets with very similar names, and was designed with water transport in mind, not necessarily walking.
We stayed at San Lio Tourist House, which was at the time a hostel in which we booked a private room for about $70 each, but now appears to be strictly a hotel. It was within walking distance of everything you could possibly want to see in Venice (if you could figure out how to get there!)
It was mid-afternoon by the time our train got in, we took the water bus, and maneuvered our way to our hotel. We did a little bit of exploring around the Piazza di San Marco and the Grand Canal on our own before taking a sunset gondola tour, complete with a gondolier serenade (one of the few things that Ashley insisted we do during the trip). I made sure we booked it ahead of time for $43 each. Dinner was giant pieces of pizza and far more gelato than we should have, right along a canal, but when in Italy…
Our second day in Venice was spent further exploring around the Piazza di San Marco, which included a $9 ticket up into the Campanile di San Marco to give us our bird’s eye view of Venice. We had booked a second, longer and more detailed gondola tourof the city for $50 each, but ended up unable to actually take the tour due to timing issues as far as hotel check out and getting to the airport. It was disappointing to me as not only were we out $50, but I was also out on a lot of the historical facts that we would have got had we been able to take the tour.
Venice was an interesting stop, because during our planning process, we didn’t think there were that many things to do there that could fill up time. I didn’t realize ahead of time that there’s a whole island in Venice that specializes in reallyintricate glass blown items called Murano. Glass blowing is something that I can literally sit and watch for hours, and while I bought some Murano glass from the main island, I would have loved to visit Murano. Between missing that and missing our Grand Canal tour, I think we could have easily spent more time in Venice, although it was one of the more expensive places we visited.
Total cost for Venice (including transportation there, but not food/taxis/souvenirs/etc): ~$250
