Venice is all about getting lost and getting away from the crowds. Yes, Piazza San Marco is beautiful, but it's crowded and full of tourists and vendors peddling flying glow sticks and green flashy lasers. Venice is much better if you wander down side streets until you don't know where you are. Luckily since Venice is a maze of canals and bridges it's very easy to do. We managed to get lost a few times and others we purposefully made our way to the quieter pockets of the city.
When we got off the train in Venice we knew we had to take a vaporetto to San Marco, so we stood in line with all of the other tourists to buy our tickets. Once we arrived on the street where our hotel was we walked down until we found the door, we rang the buzzer and heard a click and pushed open the door. We found an empty room with stone walls...hmm. There was a sign indicating the hotel was two floors up, so we walked up the stairs past a broken window and scraped up walls. I was a little worried about this hotel. We waited to book our hotels until the last minute and it was more expensive than I had hoped, but we went ahead based on good reviews on Tripadvisor. Luckily the reception desk seemed fine. We were taken up to our room and it was fine, good even. The only downside, our bathroom was outside our room across the hall, but it was only ours, so I was thrilled that at least it was a private bathroom even if we did have to walk across the hall to use it. The best part of the hotel was the balcony and the free breakfast, which included really good chocolate croissants.
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| On the Vaporetto |
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| Almost to San Marco |
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| View from hotel cafe |
Our first evening in Venice we wandered around and had dinner. Charles ordered a beer from the waiter and was asked if he wanted a small or a large, he answered large and this is what he got:
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| Charles' large beer |
We met a lovely British couple from Birmingham sitting next to us and had a great time visiting with them. Hi, Graham and Val, it was great to meet you! After our evening of hanging out in a Venice cafe we walked the long way back to our hotel and snapped a few pictures along the way.
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| Venice at night |
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| Bridge of Sighs |
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| Piazza San Marco |
Saturday our plan was to explore the city a little more and find a place where Charles could do a painting. He set up his easel in a piazza not far from our hotel and I decided to go do some wandering and find the famous fish market. That afternoon we went to the Academia to see the art collection before finding a non-tourist spot for dinner, which proved to be a little difficult. After dinner we headed home to prepare for our adventure the next day.
Sunday morning we woke up and walked to the train station, we were going to a small town called Udine to see a Serie A soccer match. We got on the train and slowly made our way, passing through several tiny towns along the way. We arrived in Udine with plenty of time to find the stadium and purchase tickets. We were pleasantly surprised to find a bus that was running directly from the train station to the stadium, we purchased our tickets and hopped on board. Once at the stadium we were relieved to find that the girl at the ticket booth spoke English. We purchased our tickets and asked her where we should go to get some lunch before the game. She directed us to the neighborhood near the stadium, which was about a 10 minute walk. We stopped into the first cafe we saw and found several fans taking part in game day festivities. After a quick lunch we walked back to the stadium to take our seats. The game started off in true Italian style, with a lot of drama, two yellow cards in the first 15 minutes and a red card for Udinese followed shortly thereafter. Despite the officiating and the overly dramatic flopping of some of the players, I really enjoyed going to a Serie A game, and Udinese won despite being down a man, which made it even better.
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| Getting lunch before the game with other supporters |
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| The fans |
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| After the game |
Once the game ended we took the bus back into Udine and had a couple of hours before our train back to Venice, so we decided to walk to the city center. We found the cathedral and then wandered to the main shopping area of town and found a beer festival going on. It was beautiful up on top of the hill in the center of town.
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| Beer festival in Udine |
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| Udine |
We stopped and got a slice of pizza on our way back to the train station and then settled in for the two hour ride back to Venice. Unfortunately, our train was late....but we made it back to our hotel in Venice eventually, tired but happy we went on our day trip to Udine. The next morning we said goodbye to Italy and headed to colder fall weather in Prague.
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| Waiting for the vaporetto to the airport |
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| Saying farewell to Italy |
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