Venice Time

On thursday Jake and I travelled from Florence to Venice. We were a little nervous about having to tackle the Italian trains again, but this trip went much more smoothly! We had actual reservations from our travel agent, so we were able to go directly to our assigned seats, which were in a lovely first class car! The seats were nice and roomy, and they even came by and served snacks and drinks. The drinks were nice, but the snack was this ridiculous cross between a fruit snack and a granola bar - it was sort of like eating sour, rubbery cardboard. Not delicious. We were also smart enough to look up the name of our arrival station, so we knew for sure that we were getting off at the right stop.

We had decided to leave our big suitcase in the storage facility at the train station, since we were going to be staying such a short time, and doing so allowed us to take the waterbus (6.50 euro pp)to the hotel instead of a water taxi (90 euro!!). Definitely worth it! However the waterbus dropped us off a few blocks from the hotel, and Jake and I definitely weren't prepared for navigating Venice. We had written down directions, but we had no map with us, and we were hopelessly lost after about 90 seconds of walking around. Jake is usually great at getting around in new places, so I knew Venice had to be hard if he couldn't do it. I get lost walking around my own neighborhood, so obviously I was no help at all.

After stopping to ask directions a few times, we finally managed to locate our hotel. And it was fantastic! We were staying at Hotel Ruzzini Palace, which is right on Campo del Santa Maria Formosa. The hotel was absolutely beautiful, and they were nice enough to upgrade us to a killer suite since our travel agent told them that this was our honeymoon. It was huuuuuuge!!!! It was called Suite Paradiso, because our windows overlooked the Paradiso Canal - and it definitely felt like paradise to me!

We picked up a good map at the front desk of the hotel, and then we headed out to explore Venice. We stopped for lunch at a little place right down the road, and it was great. I had an amazing Spaghetti ai Frutti da Mare, and Jake had liver and onions, a specialty of Venice. It was tasty, but Jake was disappointed because it didn't come with the polenta that was promised on the menu. He's still a little bitter about it. After lunch we wandered around the crazy tiny winding streets of Venice, and enjoyed being in such a different place. We explored St. Marks Square, and got ourselves soundly lost again. Luckily we had the map this time, and although it would have been useless to me, Jake was able to easily navigate our way back to the hotel. We stopped in quickly to put on some warmer clothes, and then headed out again.

We went back to see San Marco at night, and spent some time listening to the dueling orchestras that play at the restaurants lining the square. We also watched the gondolas, and Jake took tons of pictures.

At about 10:30 we headed back to the hotel and managed to easily find our way. Once we got there, the hotel surprised us with a complimentary bottle of champagne in our room!! It was the perfect way to end our first day in Venice.