Tuesday, August 11, 2009

Everyone Knows About Venice

The final destination in our mini-tour of northeast Italy was Venice. We stayed at a hotel near the airport and then rode the cheap 20-30 minute bus in to the town. Venice is an amazing place to walk around -- the surreal setup with canals instead of roads was a wonder to behold.

All that said, I would avoid going again during any festival period or on a weekend, and definitely not when there is a festival on the weekend! With each hour, the Saturday crowds got thicker and thicker. That night, there was a fireworks show starting at around 11PM. At 5PM, there was a steady stream of people flowing to the sides of one of the big canals. By the time the fireworks started, leaving Venice was no longer an option. If you are even remotely bothered by crowds or have any sort of claustrophobia, this was an awful situation. We tried to leave about halfway through the fireworks so we could catch our bus back to the hotel and simply could not. Every passage was packed with people. I had never quite understood how people get killed in the stampedes at Wal-Mart the day after Thanksgiving, but now I have a much better understanding of how that sort of thing gets started. We missed the last bus and had to find a taxi -- luckily we didn't have to wait too long.

Food in Venice was hit and miss. We tried for a nice dinner Saturday and had one of the worst meals I've had in quite some time. Thankfully, the pizzas we had for lunch were excellent -- mine had truffle oil on it -- nice. Sunday before I left, we had a good lunch at a newer restaurant in the Jewish Ghetto -- really good eggplant!

The pictures say the rest... salute!




“Though there are some disagreeable things in Venice there is nothing so disagreeable as the visitors.”
Henry James quotes (American expatriate writer 1843-1916)

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