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The
journey from Milan to Venice on the Eurostar is
approx 2.5 hours. The main railway station of
Venice is Venezia Santa Lucia. Our hotel was in
a suburb of Venice called Venezia Mestre. Mestre
is one station prior to St. Lucia. Please confirm
with your hotel about its proximity to Mestre
or St. Lucia. Some hotel will just say that they
are '5 mins walking distance from the station'
and you have to know which one are they talking
about.
Our hotel in Venice (Hotel Centrale) was really good. It was located about 1 km away from the
Mestre railway station. We took a cab from the station and he charged us ? 10 which was quite steep for a 1 km journey. You cannot trust the cabbies in Italy.
We settled in and then set out for dinner. Vegetarians might face a tough time in Italy. We found a nice ristorante called Brek. It is a self serve restaurant which offers freshly made pizza, pasta as other Italian food (both vegetarian and non-veg). The pizza is baked in front of you and you are free to choose your toppings. An average meal (if you are not having it in McD or the likes) will cost you ? 8 - ? 15 per person.
Next morning we set out to the Venice city centre. The bus stop was right outside our hotel and the frequency of the bus was every 20 mins. It costs ? 1 and 10 mins to reach the Piazza de la Roma. This is where the Venice of waterways, bridges and gondolas starts.
Venice is a maze of waterways which can be navigated
by means of vaporettos. These are water-buses
and with a ? 9 day travelcard, you can hop on
hop off all day long. Only 3 bridges cross the
Grand Canal which curves S-shaped through the
city: Ponte de Rialto, Ponte dell'Accademia and
Ponte degli Scalzi.
It is possible to walk along the streets of Venice but the directions are highly confusing. You will usually find that it is possible to get to Piazza le San Marco from the left as well as from the right of where you are standing. This is not unusual as most streets will lead you to the same place one way or the other. We suggest that you stick to the Grand Canal while you are sight-seeing. Places to see are the bridges, the Galleria dell'Accademia which houses a treasure trove of paintings and the San Marco square.
The Ponte dell'Accademia is a wooden bridge while the Ponte de Rialto is very beautiful to look at. It is quite wide and the bridge itself hosts a variety of shops. The San Marco square is very huge and beautiful. Make sure that you spend ? 1 to buy birdseed for feeding the pigeons. They will flock to you as soon as you buy the packet and they will perch on your head, arms, hands until you feed it to them.
You can get to the top of the Bell Tower next
to the chathedral by means of a lift. There is
an entry fee here again. The view from the Bell
Tower is fabulous.
Venice is famous for its carnival and people don
beautifully ornate masks during the carnical days.
These masks can be bought from any of the thousand
shops that are in every nook and cranny. The price
ranges from ? 1 for the small magnets to more
than ? 100 for the big ones.
Venice is also famous for its glass industry and
you can pick up a variety of glass figurines and
vases.
You can't go back from Venice without taking a
gondola ride. You will find a lot of gondolas
at various small bridges. The official price for
a 45 min gondola ride is ? 50 per person. Very
expensive.
What we did was to catch the solitary gondola owner in the internal streets rather than at the Grand Canal. After negotiating with him, we managed to get a ride in ? 30 per person. So that was a total of ? 60 for a romantic gondola ride. Alessandro did not sing any song . but he was quite an entertainer and we had a fun time.
A cheaper and less glamorous option is to take
a traghetto which are used to cross the Canal
from one bank to the other. Not really a substitute
for the gondola experience.
We almost missed the train to Florence as we got lost in the streets while getting back to Piazza de la Roma. But Venice will always be special because of its uniqueness.
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