Venezia: Tourists, stairs and water

In March, during Easter, there was a great opportunity to visit Venice with a friend from Portugal, Marco, so we went.

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A little bit about Venice… It is built on an archipelago of 118 islands formed by about 150 canals in a shallow lagoon. The islands on which the city is built are connected by about 400 bridges. In the old center, the canals serve the function of roads, and every form of transport is on water or on foot. Venice is Europe's largest urban car free area, unique in Europe in remaining a sizable functioning city in the 21st century entirely without motorcars or trucks.

The buildings of Venice are constructed on closely spaced wood piles (under water, in the absence of oxygen, wood does not decay) which penetrate alternating layers of clay and sand. The buildings are often threatened by flood tides pushing in from the Adriatic between autumn and early spring.

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So, I went by train where I meet two Brazilian girls who were travelling around Europe during their Easter Vacations and I arrived Venice at 7am. This was the best time because the city was still calm and waking up, sellers were opening their shops and the sun was showing up smoothly. I walked around the city and later I meet Marco who arrived from airplane in Milan.

On the second day the thrill started. We went down the Canal Grande and started to get to know the exciting experience of having a boat as main transport. We went until the Piazza San Marco which was packed with tourists from everywhere in the world! We had to wait in queues to visit anything and after climbing the tower and visiting the Basilica the San Marco we decided to go to a more calm place with less people…

So we spend the day walking by foot or boat and enjoying more relaxed spots like Arsenale, Isola di S. Pietro and other places.

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The third day we decided to visit some Murano island where the famous glass from Venice is made. It was a nice trip but there was not much to see, so we travelled to another island, the Isola di San Giorgio Maggiore with an amazing view over the Piazza San Marco. After that we returned to more crowded places and an interesting event is that I found a friend from Croatia who was travelling back from Tunisia that decided to visit Venice while he was waiting for his train back to Zagreb. What a coincidence…

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At night, with the high tide, we decided to go again to the Piazza San Marco so check if it was flooded and we were surprised by an amazing sight: the combination of the flooded square with the lights of the buildings which was worth the cold and rain that we cutch because of it.

On the last day, we went to see the Jewish Ghetto but we were a bit disappointed because there was basically only another square and soon Marco had to leave to Milan to travel back. Thus, I went again around the city appreciating some calm spots and travelling by boat.

I enjoyed my trip to Venice, it is a quiet extraordinary and magic city, but I was also a bit disappointed because it’s too much people, too much commercialized, there are people selling everything everywhere, we need to pay for everything and everything is very expensive, I got really tired of so many stairs and after returning everyone that visited Venice told me the same :)

But it was worth, it is a unique and interesting city, you just need to go with the right expectations.