Venezia: Even the name is awesome!

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!

Xx Love, Jaz