Venice Romance

If travel plans can go completely wrong then of course they can go far better than expected, as was the case when we pulled into a very sunny Venice at 1pm. Six hours earlier than we had expected. We missed the first main stop in Venice because of it but didn't have to wait too long before we were at the next.

As the entire city is pretty much one huge island, there's not much room for hostels and such so we were staying at a camping ground about 15 minutes drive out of the city. Thankfully they had an hourly shuttle bus service that picked up right next to the station we were at. While we waited in the hot sun we met a couple of Irish girls, Roshine and Della, who were waiting around looking just as lost as us. When the bus did finally come 45 minutes later we headed out to the camping ground.

The moment we walked down the dirt road to our cabin I could feel just how relaxing and fun our stay would be. The place had a swimming pool, pub, restaurant, kebab shop and its own supermarket and nightclub. It was like it was a little town full of young backpackers. There were people hanging out around the pool and playing sports here and there. Being out of the city certainly had a very calm, relaxing vibe.

We dumped our stuff and caught the shuttle bus back into the city while very grateful to have the afternoon to explore. It was still very bright and shiny so we ended up walking through the quiet, less tourist-filled canalways and soaked in the calming beauty of it all. There's not much to see in Venice and it's not very big but it's a very unique city with a unique atmosphere that just has to be experienced to be believed.

Just like most other cities, we found the main attraction by accident. The Plaza San Marco was a huge square surrounded by three walls of large 30m or so high Roman buildings with columns spaced evenly around it all. On the other side, there was a very large Persian-looking cathedral and throughout the whole plaza were a lot of pigeons being fed by tourists trying to get the perfect shot. One lady was even putting pigeon feed on her childrens heads! I can't really think of how to describe the grandness of it all so take a look at the photo.

We walked around the corner to the edge of the island where all the boats and gondola's park for that one shot that defines Venice. The one you see everywhere of the 'parking lot' made of sticks protruding from the water looking out towards a couple of huge, majestical buildings on the one island of Venice unreachable by foot.


Another hour of cute alleyways and high-arching stairways across water-filled canals and we thought we'd soaked in enough for the day. We caught the ferry down the Grand Canal back to the Piazzala Roma (main transport spot). The views of Venice from the water are one of a kind. I loved seeing really old, large buildings with their main entrances on the water and stairs leading down into the water.

That night we headed to the camping ground pub for some pizza and beer. 10 Euro for 1.5L of beer is far too good to pass up so we all ended up very merry after a few hours. There was Kat, Roshine, Della and I as well as Suzanne, a Scottish girl we met and her friend. After a while hanging out there we headed on over to the nightclub for happy hour where we ran into our Busabout driver, Matt, who had driven us from Amsterdam and from Berlin. We had an absolutely awesome night! The nightclub closed at 3am but that didn't stop Kat, Matt and I as well as some other randoms sitting around until 5:30 in the morning belting out some good old classics like 'Thunderstruck' and 'What's Goin On'. "25 years and my life is still"...

Our plans for the next day involved us getting up before 9. Fat chance of that happening. We finally did stir awake around lunch and headed to the restaurant for breakfast. After which we relaxed in the pool for a while with some of the others until we felt the urge to take a bit more of a wander around Venice in the parts we'd missed the day before.

It was pretty much more of the same but still very beautiful. We found a great designer store hidden away that was having a sale so we did our first bit of European clothes shopping. I got a very European looking shirt, one with lace on the chest, and a really cool pair of jeans with random patches sewn on here and there.

We bought a nice salad and I had pizza for dinner before we caught the shuttle back out to the camping ground. The salad was very refreshing after all the junk and heavy food I'd been eating since arriving. After that we got dressed up and went back to the nightclub for another big one.

It was pretty much the same group as the night before and it was also a nice surprise to run into Amy and Lucy from Prague and catch up with them. A few memory blanks here and there and I was being woken up by Kat with 15 minutes before the bus was about to leave. For some reason I was in her bed and she was in mine but don't ask me how that happened because I couldn't tell you for the life of me. We made the bus in time and Matty had a bit of a laught at how hungover we looked before he turned the key and took us all off to Nice.