Venice (Italy)

Venice - Venezia

- A very brief history of venice (sorry this section is a bit choppy, Venice has a very long and complex history!)

Venice was inhabited in the 5th century by refuges from nearby cities. This original population lived on small islands and marshland which protected the inhabitants from invasion. In the 6th century the inhabitants formed a type of federation which would later become the foundations for the city of Venice. Jumping forward in time a bit to 726, the inhabitants of Venice elected their first Doge - ‘Leader’. During the 11th century Venice had become a great maritime power in the Adriatic. Venice has been under various powers such as France (led by Napoleon) and Austria until 1866.

- About Venice

Venice is situated in a protected lagoon on the northern edge of the Adriatic sea. Venice is made up of a large number of small islands divided by canals and connected by bridges. There are two famous islands across the lagoon: Murano and Burano. Murano is famous for amazing glass items and Burano is famous for intricate lace - both the glass items and the lace are very expensive but they are obviously the real Murano glass/Burano lace, as there are a lot of replicas. There are well over 100 canals in Venice which means there are going to be a lot of bridges - 409 bridges to be precise! The bridges in Venice (and obviously around the world) are arched which allows the boats and gondolas to pass underneath. The largest bridge in Venice is the bridge that connects Venice to mainland Italy - the ‘Ponte della Liberta’ - the bridge is approximately 4km in length and it runs parallel to the railway into venice.

Venice is divided into six main areas/neighborhoods which are as follows: San Marco, Cannaregio, San Polo, Santa Croce, Dorsoduro and Castello. We only went to the ‘San Marco’ area of Venice as the Doge palace, Saint Marks square (Piazza San Marco), Saint Marks Basilica, the Rialto bridge and the Accademia Bridge are located in the ‘San Marco’ area of venice - these sights make the ‘San Marco’ area the most popular area for tourists.

- Arriving in Venice on the Royal Caribbean ship

We went on a Royal Caribbean cruise (our third now) this august and the cruise was called ‘7 Night Adriatic Sea Coastal Cruise’ which was on the Voyager of the seas. The main reason we wanted to go on this cruise was because one of the stops was Venice. We flew to Venice and then spent the last day of the cruise in Venice (and a bit of the next day).

When I woke up on the day we were in Venice I was greeted by the magnificent sight of Venice from our stateroom outside balcony. It was about six in the morning and the ship had not reached the cruise terminal yet so we were treated to the gorgeous sight of Venice as we made our way to the Venice cruise terminal. Departing the ship we saw a crowd of people and after investigating we found that they were queuing for tickets for water taxis (which we apparently have in Manchester, uk, on the Manchester ship canal but I have never seen them).

Before going on the cruise we had heard of this thing called ‘The People Mover’ which is basically a tram. It goes to three stops: Tronchetto parking island (which we did not go to), Marittima (the cruise terminal - the stop we boarded at) and Piazzale Roma (the last stop and the one we go off at). The People Mover opened in 2010 and the journey takes about three minutes each way.

We used the ‘People mover’ as it was only 1€ each! Which is amazing, so it only cost us 4€ to go from the Marittima (cruise terminal) to Piazzale Roma - which I think is the main arrival point in Venice. The station for the people mover was only a maximum five minute walk from the cruise terminal and the Royal Caribbean ship - which was so convenient and really easy to find as quite a few people were walking to the people mover as well.

After buying the 1€ each tickets (1€ each way) we passed though a set of turn styles where you have to scan the ticket to get though to the small platform. There are signs on either side of the platform - one side to go to the Tronchetto parking island and the other to go to Piazzale Roma (this was the set up at the marittima station as it is half way in between the parking island and Piazzale Roma). So we stood at the side where is says ‘Piazzale Roma’ but the first tram that came was so busy we waited for the next one (which only took about six minutes to arrive) but as we stood at the side that once said ‘Piazzale Roma’ it now said ‘Tronchetto parking island’ as it swaps round, so we had to switch sides and we were at the back of the queue again but we were able to get on this time.

After a cramped three/four minute journey which was quite pleasant and smooth - apart from being really squished - we arrived at the station at Piazzale Roma. There were a lot of people with suitcases on the people mover as at the Piazzale Roma station there is a secure luggage hold which I think was about 15€. Overall, if you are going on a cruise/holiday and you are near a people mover station I would definitely recommend going on it, as it is super cheap/quick and one of the three stops is Piazzale Roma (the main arrival point in Venice) - and from there you can board a water bus, water taxi or gondola. We then walked for about five minutes from the people mover station to a fairly large area, which was quite busy, where we bought a ticket for the vaporetto (water bus)...

- The Vaporetto - water bus

We bought a ticket for four adults for twelve hours but can can buy longer ones. The ticket cost us 64€ which is quite expensive but you can get on and off the bus at any stop, when ever you want and you don’t need to buy another ticket (unless you are going to use the ticket for more than twelve hours).

So we bought the ticket and before you get on any water bus you have to scan the ticket, which was very quick and easy. We then went into what was basically a bus stop which was covered, like the ones we have in England at the side of the road. But the only difference with this one (apart from the fact that the bus stop/shelter glass was not smashed and there was no graffiti on it) was that it was on the water and floating - but it was tethered to the land at the side. It was a bit of an unusual experience waiting on a floating bus stop, which did move a bit with the tide, waiting for a water bus...

The water bus was fairly large and there were lots of people on it. The main area of the bus is a covered area which had a large number of seats but when we got on all of the seats were taken so we had to stand - along with many other people (mainly tourists but some Italians). I thought that it would be really bumpy but it was not bad at all - it was fairly smooth, the only bumpy part was when the bus stopped at the little ‘bus stops’ along the way and it banged into the side of the bus stop (the same as the one we where at). Also as the water buses pulled up to the bus stops you hear this whirring/buzzing noise which sounded a little strange but it turned out to be the water splashing about as the propeller of the water bus went into reverse to reduce the speed of the water bus, so that it could stop at the numerous bus stops along the grand canal.

While on the water bus you can see the amazing sights of Venice including the array of bridges, buildings, churches, gondolas and other forms of water transport. Some of the most unusual sights we saw while on the magical (and fairly cramped) water bus journey was a courier - but the courier was a obviously boat and the packages where just placed at the front of the boat. We also saw a ambulance boat and a police boat which was really strange...and amazing at the same time! But the only thing really going though my head while on the water bus was ‘Oh my god, I’m actually in Venice and it is amazing’ and ‘Oh my god, Johnny Depp was here!’.

We got off the water bus at the ‘San Marco’ stop, which is about a ten to fifteen minute walk to Saint Marks square (Piazza San Marco) which contains the Doges palace, Saint Marks basilica, St Mark's Campanile, Saint Marks Clocktower (Torre dell'Orologio) and many, many shops/cafes. It would have only been a ten minute walk but there are so many tourist stalls/mini shops along the street leading to Saint Marks square that it ended up taking us about half an hour or probably longer - as it was fairly busy but also because me, my mum and my sister kept stopping at every single stall...

- Shops/tourist shops and prices

So as we departed from the water bus we saw a massively long line of tourist stalls along the waters edge on the far side of the street - all the way to the beginning of Saint Marks Square. The stalls were fairly small but there we lots of them next to each other. The stalls sold everything from key rings, clothing, mugs, food, drinks (including alcohol), hats and of course carnival/theatre masks - obviously not the authentic ones as they can be as much as 400€.

Me and my sister wanted masks and I ended up buying two here. The masks range from cute glittery ones, harlequin ones, joker ones, traditional theatre masks and thin metal masks. I also saw a plague doctor mask (which is the one thing, apart from spiders and jelly fish, that absolutely terrifies me - so be warned if googling this mask!). We ended up also buying two “I love Venezia” t-shirts, a mug, a tea towel, a key ring, an “I love Venezia” hoodie, an apron (as you do), an Italia hat and three more masks!

The masks ranged from about 5€ to 25€ - the more expensive masks were the metal ones - my metal mask was 20€. The drink prices are ok here as well, with soft drinks drinks priced at about 3€. The prices of the other items we bought we really good too, I expected it to be fairly expensive but the touristy shops are very affordable - I think the most expensive items we bought were the metal masks at 20-25€ and the hoodie at 15€.

- Sights

After the rather long shopping trip, we turned to the left and directly in front of us was Saint Marks square and the sheer size of the square, the basilica and Doges palace is breathtaking. After walking down that fairly busy touristy street I did not expect the square to just be around the corner. The square is huge and there are so many sights including: Saint Marks basilica, St Mark's Campanile, Saint Marks Clocktower (Torre dell'Orologio) and they are all within a few minutes walking distance from each other.

I really wanted to go inside the basilica (as I have been in Saint Peter's basilica, Vatican city and it was amazing) and it does look absolutely amazing from the outside, with vivid mosaics on the front, gold decorations, status and marble arches/pillars. But the queue for the basilica was so long and it was about one o’clock so it was fairly hot (35 degree celsius or more) so we were not able to go inside- as it would mean that we probably would not have been able to see the other sights we wanted to go to. The queue for the Doges palace was slightly shorter, but not by much, so we again did not have time to queue up. My sister (age 15) was really not interested in going in either the palace or the basilica but I did really want to go in. I even wore my black, ankle leggings and a t-shirt with shorts that day too. As you have to have your shoulders and knees covered in both buildings (this was the same when we went in the Vatican, as people were turned away after they had queued if their shoulders/knees were not covered). There is an entry fee for both the basilica and palace, I think it is about 15€ each and you are not allowed to take any pictures inside the buildings too - although we were allowed to take pictures inside Saint Peter’s basilica, Vatican city.

So instead we walked to the back of the square where the shops are and the shops here were really expensive but the small cafes/food shop prices were fairly good. The square itself is really nice, it is really busy though so you have to be fairly tall to take a picture of the sights with out getting lots of strangers heads in the picture too! Also my mum said, before we arrived at the square, that when she went to Venice about 30 years ago, there were lots of pigeons but thankfully when we went (nearly two months ago now) there were very few. Also as of 2008 because of the large number of pigeons there was a “municipal ordinance banning people from feeding them in the square” (The New York Times, 2008).

So we went to look at the shops at the back of the square (I was hoping to find a kiko cosmetics store but I didn’t unfortunately) and there were so many shops - from food shops to very expensive ornament/mask shops. In the window of one shop there was a large glass gondola (plain black Murano glass with no colour or people on it as decoration) and it was priced at 9,000€! Which is incredibly expensive and I don’t think the average tourist is going to buy something like that. The shops around the square were a little bit disappointing as there were a lot of expensive shops such as high end clothing designers and other shops that were not really of interest to us. So we then boarded the water bus yet again (the water buses are really frequent) and we had to stand in the open part this time which was ok. But you did have to keep moving out of the way of the man who worked on the bus - opening the gates on either side of the bus (depending on which side of the canal the bus stop was) to let people off and on.

The next bus stop we got off at was ‘Rialto’ - as it was close to the Rialto bridge. We walked around some of the ‘normal’ streets with non-touristy shops and it was not too busy at all but then we went to the rialto bridge...and there were so many people! There were a lot of people just standing on the bridge taking pictures and my sister managed to squeeze though and take a picture from the bridge - the view (what I could see anyway of it) was amazing. Right next to the Rialto bridge is a really long line of touristy shops/stalls on both sides of the street, which is great as the prices are fantastic but it also makes it very busy. The shops/stalls next to the Rialto bridge sold everything a tourist could want, from: keyrings, t-shirts, drinking glasses/glass ornaments (obviously not real Murano glass as that is priced in the hundreds and thousands of euros), there were some small smoothie/drink stalls and there were also thousands of masks.

We also wanted to go to the Rialto market, which is supposed to be really good but when we arrived at the Rialto bridge the market was closed (I think the market closes at 12 or 1). Apart from the rialto market being closed and the large number of tourists around the Rialto bridge it was a fantastic place to visit. The large number of tourist shops was great as they are not expensive at all so we did end up buying quite a few things. I personally bought: a Leonardo Da Vinci t-shirt (Leonardo Da Vinci did visit and work in Venice) and a glass penguin which was obviously not real Murano glass as it was only 6€. I also bought two more masks, to add to the two I bought near Saint Marks Square, which I think were two for 10€. We found a good cafe along the edge of the canal, near the Rialto bridge, in which we bought four of what looked like small thin pizzas folded into wraps. As I am a vegetarian I bought the tomato and mozzarella wrap and it was really good - four of the wraps cost us about 15€, which I think is a really reasonable price. Overall, I would visit the Rialto bridge again, to get some more pictures from the bridge and to visit the market. It is a really great place to visit, if you don’t mind the large number of tourists.

After the Rialto bridge we boarded the water bus again, for the third and final time, to go back to the ‘Piazzale Roma’ people mover station to then go to the cruise terminal and the ship. We had correctly disembarked the water bus the previous two times but this time we got off at one stop too early. So we had to walk for about fifteen minutes to get to the bridge where the people mover station was. Although it is actually a good thing that we got off at the wrong stop as we came across a fairly quite area with some really nice food (pasta/alcohol) shops. We also found a shop which had personalized aprons, oven mitts and baby clothes in - so we went in and bought two oven mitts for my auntie and we asked for her name printed to be sewn onto them. So we wrote her name down and the woman who owned/worked in the shop got one plain oven mitt and literally in the blink of an eye she had sewn the name in a really nice calligraphy style on the mitt with a flower on it - it was amazing to watch and it only took like two minutes for her to sewn the name on both mitts and I think together they were only 10€! So we were very impressed with that shop and my auntie was delighted with the gift too.

We made our way back to the people mover station at ‘Piazzale Roma’ and had to pay another 1€ each for the return trip to the Marittima - cruise terminal where the Royal Caribbean ship was and it was not as busy this time and we managed to get a seat. Back on the ship we rested and looked over all of the amazing things we bought from the day...

- Getting around - walking

The next day we had a late flight from Marco Polo airport so as we arrived at the airport, it was literally chaos! And I did not want to wait there for about four hours so me and my dad decided to get a bus (not a water bus) back into venice. Firstly, finding the buses to go to various destinations is incredibly easy as the buses are just at the front of the airport. You have to buy a ticket from a machine before getting on the bus and we missed the first bus as the ticket machine was a bit confusing and some Italians near by tried to help but neither me or my dad know italian very well. We ended up paying 21€ for my ticket as we didn’t know how to use the machine (as it was in italian) and the second ticket was only 9€ as we had figured it out.

So we boarded the bus and scanned our tickets on a little machine on the bus and then sat for the 30 minute drive back though some residential areas and over the ‘Ponte della Liberta’ back into Venice. It would have taken about 30 minutes but it did take about 45 as a disaster happened on the way. A young girl (about 13/14) got off the bus and crossed the road and was hit by an on coming car. It was a awful sight to witness and it was not really the drivers fault as she crossed in front of the bus and the car could not have seen her in time - but thankfully she was not hurt. So after that unfortunate accident we carried on and eventually reached the Venice - the buses stop right near the ‘Piazzale Roma’ people mover station- this is also where we waited to get on the return bus back to the airport.

When in Venice we started walking to the Rialto bridge and on the way we ended up passing lots of shops that were not really touristy but the prices were really good. There were a lot less tourists this day, as it was a saturday, especially at the Rialto bridge again but not nearly as many as the day before. We made our way to the Rialto bridge and it was so easy to find as there are a lot of street signs with arrows to follow which led us straight to the Rialto bridge. It only took us about half an hour (or 40 minutes) to walk to the Rialto bridge and the touristy line of shops we had been to the day before. We bought a couple of things from the shops there and then on the way back I had a small tub of coffee ice cream which only cost 2€ which was amazing, as was the ice cream! We got back on the bus, which was very easy to find again after the walk around Venice and then back to the airport with plenty of time to spare.

- Tips from my experience of Venice

Firstly if you do want to see the grand canal then the water bus is great but it is a bit expensive and I don’t think anyone really would end up using the 12 hour ticket or the 16 hour ticket that can be purchased. The water bus can be really busy/cramped but it is a good and really unusual experience (especially waiting for the water buses and the ‘bus stops’).

I would say that if you are up to walking then you may want to consider it, as it is so incredibly easy to make your way around due to the area being well signposted with arrows so you can’t really get lost. We walked from Piazzale Roma to the Rialto bridge and we found it really easy and the walk was not too bad either. On google maps the distance from Piazzale Roma to the Rialto bridge is 1.8km and it should take 21 minutes (according to google maps), I think it did take us about 30 to 40 minutes.

One of the main tips if you are going to Venice is ‘The People Mover’! If you are at the Tronchetto parking island or the marittima/cruise terminal then you will be a short walk away from a people mover station. It was really easy to find and it is only 1€ one way, which I think is fantastic and it takes you straight to Piazzale Roma (or the Marittima or parking island if you are going in the other direction, away from Venice).

Also, if you are going to Saint Marks square and you want to go inside the Doges palace or the Basilica make sure you dress appropriately and are prepared to queue. Also the shops in and around the square are really expensive so I would buy souvenirs at the touristy shops (along the street to the square or at the rialto bridge) as they are really affordable - although they obviously do not sell real murano glass, real burano lace or authentic masks as they can be up to 400€ or more but these stores are great for presents for people back home and also personal souvenirs.

Lastly, as I am English I have to mention the weather - it was really nice when we went, in the mid 30’s and it was sunny all day. But the weather in Venice can change fairly quickly and Venice if prone to lots of rain and occasional thunder. So I would take appropriate clothing items and an umbrella just in case. Also I would definitely recommend getting on the buses outside the airport as they are cheaper than the taxis - as one 12 hour ticket is 9€ (although we did pay 21€ for mine as the writing on the screen was italian). The buses do go to other places, not just Piazzale Roma and the bus was very clean/modern and there is a storage area for luggage - and a fair amount of seats/standing room.

Conclusions

Positives

• Easy to navigate around as all of the streets are sign posted well
• Not a lot of tourists on a saturday - especially compared to the day before
• Food/cafe prices around the ‘San Marco’ area we went to were really good (although we did not go into any restaurants)
• Tourist shops are everywhere and they sell great souvenirs at really great prices
  Food shops are also really good (dried food such as pasta, risotto rice and alcohol) but they are a little bit expensive with one normal bag of pasta being sold for 6€ - the cheapest bag of pasta we bought in Venice was 4€
• Water buses are easy to use, fairly pleasant to be on (except for the large number of people on them) and they are not very bumpy at all
• There are a lot of shops including: tourist shops, normal shops (such as chemists) and a lot of expensive shops such as designer clothing shops - especially in and around Saint Marks square
• The weather was gorgeous when we went (nearly two months ago now)
• Sights: including Saint Marks basilica, the Doges Palace and the various other buildings and the lagoon are breathtaking
• The people mover! And the large number of buses at the front of the airport which was very convenient

Negatives

• The water bus was quite expensive and we didn’t use all of the twelve hours up so we wasted a bit of money and we only used the water bus three times (San Marco, Rialto and the wrong stop..)
• Very busy in some areas such as the Rialto bridge - so due to the large number of tourists (and it was a bit noisy) I would say that it is not suitable for young children
• Some of the shops are really expensive (items such as Murano glass, Burano lace and authentic carnival masks are among the most expensive)
• The queues for Saint Marks basilica and the Doges palace were really long (and you can’t take pictures inside either)

Overall, I would definitely visit Venice (or Venezia as the Italians say) again as it is so magical and mysterious with individuals from Leonardo Da Vinci, Casanova, John Ruskin, Marco polo, Margaret ‘Peggy’ Guggenheim, Igor Stravinsky (who is buried in San Michele cemetery, an island in the Venetian lagoon) and Tiziano Vecelli (Titian) were drawn to the beauty and magnificence that is Venice. To me Venice optimizes opulence, grandeur and beauty, so I would not hesitate to recommend Venice as a fantastic place to visit.

Thank you for reading my first travel review. I will also post this review on dooyoo under my username tigger1992. If you have any questions or if i have missed any information out of the review, just message me.