My Travel Diary: Venice

I’ve always wanted to go to Venice so when my boyfriend accidentally told me about the surprise trip he planned I was more than excited. Then, however, after doing a bit of research, I became sceptical. I’m not a big fan of churches and old buildings and it seemed as though 100% of the things to do in Venice revolved around these. However, I was determined to have a great time, as let’s be honest, any holiday is better than sitting in lectures.

After getting lost trying to find our hotel at 2am, we got up to go exploring. It was much more pleasant getting lost in the daytime and, because it was pretty hot and sunny for October, losing our way became our favourite activity over the 4 days we were there. Behind eating and drinking of course. There’s a law in Venice that bans wood fired ovens and apparently the locals hate tourists asking for pizzas, but even so, they make them pretty damn well! The pasta, meat and fish wasn’t too shabby either, but our waistlines weren’t ideal.

They serve wine with your dinner, not by the bottle, but by the litre which made it quite hard to stay aware of how much we’d drank. It didn’t matter that much though considering a litre was only 8 euros and a glass of prosecco was 2. They also served cheap cicchetti in many of the bars, which are small Italian snacks like mozzerella balls and mini pizzas, so you were never too far from good food.

One night after dinner, we were walking over the Rialto Bridge (which is apparently beautiful and famous but I’d never heard of it and it was covered with a giant Diesel advert) and found a cafe that served the best lemon tart I’ve ever eaten. It was right on the bank of the Grand Canal and we were served by the jolliest waiter I’ve ever met who spent a while trying to correct my poor attempt at ordering in Italian (apparently ‘lemon tart please’ is harder than you think).

Although eating and drinking was our main past time, we did spend some time doing other things (such as taking multiple pictures of the back of my head apparently). A gondola ride was out of the question due to 100 euro price tag but we did take a boat out to Murano, a small island famous for its glass. We also visited the dungeons of Doge’s Palace in St Mark’s Square which was interesting, although the tour did drag to be honest. We were in there for like 2 hours, listening to a women tell the story of Casanova in excruciating detail.

The ‘Boats That Should Be Cars’ Game

Another fun past time, that may not be great for the more cultured readers among you, is the “Boats That Should Be Cars” game which my friend made up on his visit. Obviously Venice has no roads, which means no cars, however, you never really think until you get there that that means everything has to be a boat. The aim is to identify as many weird boats that should be cars as you can. Pretty simple right? Here are some examples of what we found:

• Fed-Ex Boat
• Police Boat
• Dustbin Boat
• Boat Bus
• Supermarket Delivery Boat

Despite being slightly reluctant, I had the best time in Venice. It really is the most beautiful place and has amazing (and cheap) food. I even sat through some opera without completely hating it. I’d definitely recommend a visit, although apparently the canals smell in the Summer so plan wisely.

Katie x