So that's what we did - that part of the trip kind of built itself. Venice would be the first part of Italy we'd do, and we'd travel the rest of the country after. When working out timings for the trip, we'd reach Venice mid-May - good weather, but before the big holiday period begins. We wanted 3 full days in Venice - but timing meant we had to skim various places down. To do 2 full days in Bled, we'd have to sacrifice time in Venice. But we found a way to make it work - arrive in the evening, then 2 full days, then a half day. 2 and 3/4 days, almost 3 days - that would be fine. We locked it in, and it was just a matter of getting around to it after everything else!
There are no trains from Slovenia into Italy proper - there used to be, but not anymore. There is a rail-bound route you can take using a local train from Ljubljana to the border, then walk a short distance to a Tram which takes you to Trieste, and then train from Trieste to Venice. Complicated, less than ideal given we had big bags, and oh yeah - we were in Bled, so would have to go to Ljubljana as well. There are no buses from Bled to Venice either - but there are buses from Ljubljana to Venice. Flixbus, the German bus giant that's spreading its wings around Europe, had an bus doing that route on their app leaving and arriving at a convenient time - not only could you book the bus in the app, but you could just show the app as your ticket rather than having to print it out. What's more - a day or two before we booked, Flixbus sent me a discount voucher to use against our next bus trip. Yes please, we'll make use of that for getting to Venice!
So we bussed from Bled to Ljubljana in the morning as we had to be out of the hostel by 10am. The bus to Venice wasn't until 3pm - so we'd have a few hours to kill in Ljubljana. Sasha and I didn't feel much like wandering beyond the train station, so we went back to the platform cafe/bar and had more E1 wines each. We also had McDonalds for lunch, and later some sundaes. In the end, the bus was nearly 30mins late arriving - it had been on time (you could track it by GPS on the app) until it hit outskirts Ljubljana, and then about the time it was due the GPS tracker stopped working. When the bus arrived, the driver and attendant didn't seem very interested in helping put bags under the bus, or helpful in general. Once on the road, all the announcements were made in 1 language and it wasn't English (Italian or Slovenian, I couldn't say which) - not that there was many announcements mind you! Also, it seems the GPS/Onboard Wifi unit had failed and the attendant pulled out a spare box and briefly attempted to install it - and by that I mean he took the box over to the compartment by the driver, held it over the hole, lifted a cable and seemed perplexed as to whether it would go in the only hole there was, and then packed it all away.
The scenery as we neared southern Slovenia and the Italian border got quite nice and scenic, and then we hit a traffic jam as we hit the Italian border. I wondered why until our bus got waved over by some Policeman at the border and the bus driver said what amounted to Passport Control. Italy and Slovenia are both EU countries, and both Schengen - there should be no border formalities of any kind. It seemed more that these were a kind of Customs Police (also not supposed to have them in Schengen zone) and although they briefly looked at Sasha and my passports, they really gave some others a grilling and hauled two people off the bus to fetch their bags for a more thorough search. Half an hour later they were allowed back on the bus, looking quite shaken. Afterwards we headed into Trieste, paralleling that tram line I mentioned earlier - and the tracks looked rusty like it hasn't been running for a while. After Trieste it was a flat journey to Venice, dodging massive lines of trucks which just seemed to clog the highway! The bus dropped us off at the Bus Terminal on the island of Venice, near the port and from there we caught a kind of airport shuttle train to the ferry port terminal. From here it was a short walk across a canal bridge, past the train station to our accommodation - we had arrived!
Sasha had insisted we stay in actual Venice, i.e. on the Archipelago, rather than in Venice Mestre on the mainland where its cheaper. That was fine, as after all we were there to be in actual Venice - but where would be cheap enough, and also have good access to public transport? thanks to Denise we knew ferries were a slow way to get around Venice, but nor did we want to walk around a lot with our bags. Not too far from the train station was a Hotel which was within our price scope, so we booked it. It was a fairly pleasant place to stay - older decor, but quite convenient and located on one of the main streets. It was quiet enough at night as well. In all, we had a good stay here!
Venice is not a city built on an Island where they built many different canals. Venice is a city built on many different islands and the canals are the original gaps between those islands (although heavily modified). There are two ways to get around Venice - one is by ferry boats which use either the main canals, or go around the outside of the Islands; the other is to walk. Venice is actually a fairly pleasant city to walk around, and walking can often be quicker than taking the ferry. Lots of bridges, lots of weird little nook passageways, twisting lanes, and also bigger streets which are the main thoroughfares. Only certain parts seemed to be crowded though not ever fight-your-way-through people kind of crowded (might have been the time of year we were there) but whether at night time or day time, the city seemed to buzz with atmosphere and people. If it got a bit much? just turn down another side-alley and all of a sudden there would be no-one, and you could find yourself a quiet route to where you wanted to go one block across. Getting lost in the streets of Venice is a lot of fun, and everywhere is different and all of this is true for either daytime, and night - Venice at night is vibrant, exciting and buzzing.
One thing Venice is known for is rising sea levels, and the fact that it is flooding with more regularity. The sea levels are rising on two fronts I guess - one as a result of Global Warming/Climate Change, though that's a bit more muted compared to the other - which is not so much the sea actually rising, but rather than Venice is sinking relative to sea level. Why is it sinking? It was built on marshy islands, with stone buildings built on wooden rafts on top of these islands. Simply, the buildings are too heavy for its foundations.
Libreria Acqua Alta, located as it is adjacent to a canal, suffers during these floods with books getting wet and ruined. To the point where a lot of books are now located not on shelves, but in bathtubs, dishes of sorts and even an old Venetian Gondola so that if it does flood, the books will float. Only thing is, there are so many books that many are still piled up from the ground and will get ruined in the next flood. Previously ruined books now form the basis of a viewing platform out the back overlooking the canal, but the side room opens directly into the canal and the water level was not terribly much below the ground level. A neat place to visit, but flooding must happen fairly regularly!
If there's one thing Venice is famous for, it is the Venetian Gondola's which ply the canals (not to be confused with the kind of Gondola which often carries people up hills or mountains - they are two very different things, despite the common name!). Naturally, being image conscious Venice tightly controls who can be a Gondola driver and how many there can be - and naturally as a consequence of this plus being the icon they are, riding one is expensive. A half an hour ride during the day is €80, a night time the ride extends to 40mins and goes up to €100. You might say its a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity so why the hell not, go do and experience what Venice is famous for. But we had a problem - we are travelling as cheaply as possible to try and see as much as possible, not necessarily do as much as possible. There are a couple of things we had decided to splash out on - the Hot Air Balloon in Turkey was a must, catching the Queen Mary 2 was another, as was riding behind Flying Scotsman out of London. Those were organised before we'd even left on our travels - riding a Gondola was something which we hadn't pre-planned as we weren't certain we wanted to do it. Sure, we wanted to do it, but didn't want to splash out the expense - rather, we couldn't justify it.
We knew there were Gondola's which act as ferries across the Grand Canal - they take you from one side to the other and it only costs a handful of Euros. You'd have to stand, you'd be on there with a lot of other people, it wouldn't be the romantic ride along the Canals that you see in pictures or movies but it would be riding a Gondola on a canal in Venice. So we settled ourselves on doing this, admittedly a little envious of others we'd see riding Gondola's around Venice though having said that, we saw a lot of people in them looking like they weren't enjoying themselves and also there seemed to be a lot of congestion in various canals - certainly the main waterways where the Gondola's are competing for space amongst themselves as well as other traffic did not seem like a good time.
Concurrent with all of this, a few days earlier Mum had messaged me to say I'd won a $100NZ petrol voucher for a competition I'd entered with my KiwiSaver and it had been delivered to my parents house - did I want it, if not my parents would use it and give me the money for it. While having petrol money for when we'd be driving around in NZ would be useful, having the cash on hand would be more useful so I opted for that. Mum put the money into my bank account, and suddenly we had extra money to the tune of about €60. Hmm.
I hadn't told Sasha about winning the petrol voucher, so when I did tell her and also told her that I had decided we'd use that money towards the cost of a Gondola ride, it came as a bit of a surprise for her. In real terms, the Gondola would only be costing us €20 from our normal travel funds rather than €80. I knew Sasha really wanted to, so lets do it! Sasha's initial reaction was muted - we'd already decided not to and that was money that could be used for meals or other things along the way, but pretty soon Sasha agreed that since we're here and have the opportunity now, lets do it.
We had a big think about how we'd go about it - we didn't want the big water ways, we didn't want the congested water ways either. We decided to try and find a Gondola around near Academia, where it was quieter and there were fewer Gondola's. We found one, and went for a very pleasant ride along the canals. We got a bit more than we bargained for - some of the canalways didn't even have paths alongside, and with no other traffic there was just the sound of the lapping water on our Gondola; and near the end, we exited onto the Grand Canal and had a few minutes on there amongst some ferry traffic (was a bit fun rather than scary) before diving back into the Academia area. We both thoroughly enjoyed it and I know I'm grateful to have had the experience - no less so than being able to do it with Sasha!
There are plenty of ferries in Venice, but depending on where you are going they aren't necessarily going to get you there fast. Our trip to Lido came about because we wanted to take a ferry ride up the Grand Canal for photos, and we boarded the ferry at the very first stop to score some of the front seats - in which we were successful. After a very pleasant ride along the Canal as the sun started setting, we decided to stay on the ferry to its end destination of the island of Lido and see what there was to see there and check out some of the Venice beaches there. We had a good wander around Lido - one of the few places in Venice where vehicles are allowed, but we discovered that the beaches are fenced off and locked up at night - not just the resorty areas, but the entire beach. So although we got to see it by peering through the hefty fences, we didn't get to go on the beach. What we did do is stumble across an old Double Decker bus that was now a kind of cafe/pub where you could either take food and drink away, or sit and eat it upstairs. We bought some beers and sat upstairs for a while, the upper floor had been raised to accommodate the kitchen below and the roof raised to allow sufficient height so it was open at the sides. Quite a cool concept really, and after finishing the beers we went back to the ferry terminal, and caught one of the 3A ferry boats - but the wrong one (they were side by side!) and so took a "long-way-round" route back home, eventually deciding to get off at one of the earlier major stops and walk through the streets as the choppy sea and the darkness outside (plus some very rough driving from the driver) wasn't doing Sasha's motion sickness any favours. A 20min stroll through the Venice streets at night and we were back at the Hotel.
Our hotel had originally offered to help book us a private trip out to the Islands of Murano and Burano, which are part of Venice but kind of their own towns too. I'd never heard of either, Sasha had heard of Murano as it was where the main Venetian glass was made. The trip seemed a fairly alright deal, but the timings were fixed and we'd have to work our day around it. We could do the trip by ourselves using public ferries, but apparently the ferries get over-full. In the end, having thought about it long and hard (literally all day), we decided we would go to these Islands - but go early to try and avoid crowds, and do them not in the normal order of Murano then Burano, but the other way around.
Burano is known for its colourful houses. It certainly was not a letdown in this regard! Because we got there fairly early, there wasn't that many people around to get in the way of photo. We'd seen photos from when Denise and David had been to Burano of David, in his brightly coloured outfit managing to find buildings which match his clothes and pose with them, I was wearing a blue shirt and blue jeans, both a similar hue to Sasha got me to pose with a blue building. Sasha's outfit was more of a challenge - she was wearing the dress she had bought in Serbia, which was grey with pink/purple flowers on it, some yellow and leafy patterns. We found a place however that matched almost too perfectly! By the time we were about done taking photos there an hour later, the next ferry arrived and discharged a huge amount of people - making photos virtually impossible!
We instead crossed the nearby bridge to the Island of Mazzorbo, which is known for its vineyard and garden. We did see if it was possible to get a tasting of the one wine they make on this Island, which it is but you have to pay €25 for about 70mls. A whole bottle, which is only 500mls, is in the region of €125. Suffice to say, despite the best efforts of the waiter to get us to try some or get us to have lunch there, we did not! Nearby was another ferry stop and we caught the ferry to Murano.
Venice, as a heavily touristed city, is not known for an abundance of cheap eats. However there are some, and thanks to Sasha's careful research we ended up having a good range of food to eat when we did eat out. Lunch on our first full day was from a little takeaway pasta box place, which had just opened for the day and had a sizeable line outside it when we got there. You chose the type of pasta you wanted (spiral, shell, macaroni, spaghetti etc), the kind of meat & sauce combination you wanted, and then any extras you might want and the chef's whip it up, put it in a little box much like takeaway Asian food. I went with Bolognese, Sasha with Super Cheese and we let the Chef decide which kind of pasta would be best to go with each of these. We also got little piccolos of wine, and when we asked where a nice place to sit and eat the meal might be, we were directed to a square outside a church and next to a canal not far away. When we got there, we nabbed the last spot to sit - it seems everyone in all the other spots all had the same pasta boxes, and had all asked the same question! We also visited a few wine bars which served little tapas-like morsels called cicheti, which provided a welcome few nibbles; and on our last day, we had an early lunch at a streetside restaurant which had meals within our price range. Sasha had the Tagiatelle Ragu and I had a Lasagne, the presentation of the food was not exactly spectacular but the taste was amazing. Otherwise, we bought sandwiches from the supermarket for lunch to have on our Murano/Burano day, Breakfast was from our supplies and the last night in Venice, I bought us a takeaway Pizza as a very late dinner which we consumed in our hotel room.
As for drink - a fair amount was consumed! We went to a little wine bar where we tried Aperol Spritz, a drink popular in Italy but seemingly most popular in Venice. We also had some Prosecco wine there (at €2.50 a glass, it seemed like a steal!) after as we'd struck up a conversation with our neighbours and weren't ready to go yet. The older gentleman next to us was named Stirling, he came from the UK but worked a lot in Malta and had bought a bottle of spirits for a ridiculously cheap price even though he couldn't possibly drink it all before they left the next day nor would be able to take it with him, but that wasn't the point! He was well travelled and was visiting Venice with a friend who is a lady (they weren't a couple) and her daughter.
We also visited a little place which had cheap wine - €0.60 a glass! They also had a more austere kind of cicheti consisting of just meat and cheeses on a paper plate, and the place was crowded when we went. So we decided to get 4 glasses of the red, and a sausage/cheese plate. There was no place to sit inside - its not designed to have anywhere - so we sat by the canal edge on some steps, and ate and drank our fill. Once we'd drunk them all, Sasha went and got another two plus another plate. We'd gotten to the place at 7pm, and it closed at 8pm - with 10mins to close, I went back to order another last 2 glasses. Having thought about it while in the queue, I instead ordered 4. When we first ordered 4, there were two of us to carry them - but now it was just me. But I had figured out how to carry 4 glasses with 2 hands, and did so successfully! Afterwards, Sasha needed to use the bathroom and there was another little bar like we'd just been to next door. They wouldn't let us use the bathroom unless we bought something - the wine was €1 a glass here but they had bubbles, Sasha's favourite so that seemed an alright price for using the bathroom! Suffice to say, my head paid the price for all the wine the next morning - Sasha somehow fared better than I!
Summing Up
Don't get me wrong, Venice was still very busy and thronging with tourists. It does make me wonder what pre-tourist Venice looked like - and it was probably a lot more dingy looking and seedier, a lot of the cleanliness will be for the benefit of the tourists. Sasha loves Paris, to the point where she's been a few times. I only went once, we did everything I could think of wanting to do there, and its all about done for me - I am not in any hurry to go back there, yet I know of lots of people who will go to Paris time and time again and just can't get enough of it. Venice, though - I really feel like had I managed to get there earlier in my travels, it is probably a place that I would have been quite keen to go back to and probably would have featured in our big travels regardless. Am I disappointed I can't go back and visit it again sometime soon? Not at all, there will be other opportunities in the far future - one thing about having been to a place is knowing whether it is worth another visit or not, and you can cherry-pick the best parts which is especially useful when you have to travel halfway across the globe to visit Europe again. But Venice was a great opening act for our travels around Italy, and certainly helped set the stage!