Italy Blog: Venice

Venice – 5/24-5/26

We took the train from Milan to Venice. Tren Italia (the system which runs Italy’s trains) is pretty comfortable but it doesn’t come close to comparing with Japan’s ShinKanSen (bullet train) system. Overall, I was happy enough with Tren Italia and the trip between Milan and Venice flew by, particularly since I was asleep for most of it.

Venice is a beautiful city. The buildings are amazing and architecture is astounding. I can see why people call it a romantic city. It is a city with many canals and the only way to get anywhere is on foot.

From the train station we took the vaporetto (a water bus – a big boat) to the hotel. We originally thought we’d take the varporetto everywhere since it was the only option to get anywhere (other than by walking.) The varporetto we took ended up being very crowded, slow because it made every stop, and thoroughly unenjoyable. Once we made it to our stop (45 minutes later) we decided that we’d walk everywhere rather than experience the vaporetto again.

Venice has a lot of alleys which are great to explore and a ton of piazzas (plazas). After 3 days of exploring the alleys and piazzas, however, they start to look alike. There are gift shops on every block (multiple on a single block) and you cannot go anywhere without running into one. Venice is truly a city for tourists. All of the gift shop owners speak English and they are prepared for you (meaning high prices for everything.) All of the restaurants have English menus and the waiters all speak varying degrees of English.

The most negative memory I have of our Italy trip occurred in Venice. We had one particularly pompous waiter who demanded that we pay him a tip. In Italy there is a cover charge to sit at a table. It is understood that you do not pay servicio (tip) unless you feel that the waiter has earned it. We paid our bill and upon seeing that we did not leave him a tip (we didn’t think he had done anything to earn it, and he routinely made us go out of our way to get his attention for simple things including getting the check) told us that servicio wasn’t included in the bill and waited at our table until we gave him some Euros. I was too surprised at his audacity to put him in his place like he deserved. We gave him a servicio just to get him away from us and we will be sure to never go there on any return trips.

We explored the city a lot and walked around aimlessly. The biggest downside to Venice is the amount of tourists it gets. Because there are so many tourists it makes it impossible to enjoy the city just as it is. Anywhere you go you bump into a handful of tourists, making it impossible to enjoy the city for its true character. The number of tourists kept us from enjoying Venice and we were ready to leave before all 3 days were up.

As we were leaving Venice we learned a regatta was taking place on the grand canal. It would have been something exciting to see but we were too tired of Venice by then to care and we were happy to be moving onto the next city.