From Prague we were headed for
Venice, spending a pit stop night in Munich. Boarding the 8am bus from Munich
to Venice, I hear a faint and confused "Jaz?" from the rear of the
coach. I turned to see three very beautiful and rather familiar faces! Tess,
Cara and Jess were on Busabout!!
We had a very welcome catch up and
said goodbye once they left the coach at Innsbruck, planning to catch up in 2
days time in Venice.
The journey into Italy was incredibly
scenic, exactly what the postcards portray, there are castles resting on cliffs
complete with private gardens and fortified walls. Can’t even think how they
managed to haul all the stone up there back in the day! The drive was literally
breath taking; constantly pinching myself to make sure we were actually here.
We got off the bus, for our first rest stop in Italy and were hit with heat;
finally Europe is bringing on its summer!
The camp site we stayed at was great,
a big pool with loungers around it, a restaurant and a few bars. Slinging up
the hammocks we bought in Cambodia, we took a few days here and there to relax.
I think we are really getting the hang of this travel/ relax thing have left
and the locals are around to make it far more authentic.
We woke up the next morning, (excited
to get don our shorts and singlet for the first time since Asia) eager to
explore Venice. We ventured in with Kate and Charlotte, the delicious sisters
from Melbourne! Kate sorted all the buses and made sure we caught the right
ones, and we were all glued to the windows as the city was revealed to us. We
jumped off the bus and joined the throngs of tourists.
I’m struggling for words to describe
what we saw; the streets are cobbled and carless. The streets vary from huge
piazzas to tiny alleyways that you have to squeeze past the locals. We did away
with the maps and used the Grand Canal as our bearing, trying to navigate the
hundreds of bridges and canals. You can’t see anything, as the buildings are
around 4 or 5 stories high and the streets are tight, so it’s hard to get any
kind of landmark. We weaved our way around for a few hours, stopping for tear
inducing gelato and fresh pizza, and then we stumble into the incredible San
Marco Square. With the St Mark's Basilica on our left and the impressive palace on our right and San Marco's Square
smothered in tourists spread out in front of us.
Stretching out ahead, the waterfront
was lined with countless gondola. View after view is just picture perfect! We
had lunch and retraced our steps, watching the counterfeit bag sellers run away
from the Venezia Polizia. Rick snapped a great shot of one of the sellers
hiding down an alley way. The sellers are so sneaky, the lay out all the knock
off bags on a sheet so if the need to make a quick getaway they can just grab
them all up in one sweep and hoof it.
Rick sniffed out a motorbike and
befriended the rider, Ryan who was spending 3 months around Europe... initially
with a friend, but now by himself as his mate broke his wrist after a fall off
his bike. We captured him and we met up with Tess, Cara and Jess again. They
had only one night in Venice, and with no Kate to direct the public transport,
we ended up rather lost. We took the number 45 bus in the wrong direction, and
had to take a tram to where we could catch a bus into Venice. Asking a few
locals which bus we needed to take we see the number 4 drive past us, that was
our bus! So we all bolted down the street, chasing the bus. Ryan and Rick made
it first, asking the bus driver to wait for us. Cara and Tess jumped on and as
Jess and I ran up the bus started pulling away! Ryan pushed the emergency
button and the bus driver was yelling obscenities, and Jess and I leaped onto
the moving bus with the doors closing right on our tails. In hope that it was
actually the right bus, we asked an Italian couple behind us, and he said we
had the wrong bus. After all that! After both us and the Italians consulting
the driver it turns out we were on the right bus and the Italians had the wrong
bus! Tourists 1/ Italians 0. After our marathon of public transport, we finally
made it to Venice.
Venice evenings are beautiful, the
ambience is incredibly romantic. We witnessed the flooding of Venice, where the
Piazza is flooded every 3 or 4 days, due to the high tides. It was so cool to
see everyone wading through the water and the men picking up their female
counterparts so they won’t ruin their shoes. The flooding was definitely one of
Rick's highlights, just so beautiful with all the lights reflected off the deep
pools of water.
Heading home, we paced through the
Venice jungle and jumped on a bus leaving Venice as it was midnight and there
was a thunderstorm... only to approach the end of the line in the middle of
nowhere with the bus driver's exclamation of "Finito!!!". We
disembark into the rain in the small hours of the morning. Ryan had a cell
phone and we decided to call the camping ground hoping they would order a taxi
for us. They issued us a taxi company number which we rang but to no avail.
Rick suggested we walk back towards the town we passed through to find a pub or
gas station. We managed to flag down a police car a few hundred metres into our
walk, who were very kind to call us a taxi, especially as we had no idea where
we were. 10 minutes later we scrambled into a taxi, waiting for our wallets to
get reamed, as we were blatantly desperate tourists. With €10 on the metre
before we even left. The final fare of €25 was far less than we expected. So
glad to see our beds in our minuscule cabin, we peeled off our damp clothes and
crashed.
Venice is our favourite city so far.
Just the immense contrast to anything we’ve ever seen, the tourists put a
little dampener on the atmosphere, but come out in the evening and a vast
majority of the people roaming the streets are local, or Italian at the very
least!
