The GoGlobal Blog

Venezia!

Venezia!

Over the weekend I went on my first self-planned trip! I wanted to go somewhere in Italy for my first trip so Venice seemed like the perfect place. On Thursday night we took a 9:30 pm train that arrived in Venice around five in the morning. It was definitely a new experience to take a night train in a country where I don’t speak the language very well. Not everyone is assigned seats on the train so there were people standing in the aisles. Since a lot of people are sleeping, so they don’t announce the names of the stops, which made it difficult to determine when our stop was coming up. The train ride became even more stressful when we realized that we accidently bought tickets for the wrong day! Luckily, the train conductors didn’t make us buy new tickets, but that also meant that we didn’t have assigned seats anymore. After walking around for a little while, we did find some empty seats to use for the remainder of the train ride.

Once we got to Venice we went to the ticket desk and switched our returning tickets to the correct date so we wouldn’t have any more problems on the way back. Then, we took the waterbus to our hostel. I thought it was pretty cool that there were boats for public transportation! When we got to our hostel we wanted to take a quick nap before exploring the city, but there were people sleeping in our beds still so we just dropped our backpacks off in lockers and were on our way to see the city. We spent the whole rest of the day walking around and seeing all of the sights. We saw the Basilica di San Marco, Campanile Tower, Rialto Bridge, Jewish Ghetto, Frari Church, and Palazzo Ducale. There are shops all around the city with souvenirs: Venetian glass, scarves, and lace are common items. The canals that run throughout the city are really beautiful too. We walked around literally all day until around seven when we returned to our hostel for a nap before going to dinner. We had dinner along the canal near Piazza San Marco. Venice is a really great place to just sit outside and enjoy the views! After dinner we went back to our hostel again and I fell asleep right away after such a busy day.

The next morning we checked out of the hostel and went to see the Santa Maria della Salute Church before heading to the train station. It was really beautiful, especially from the outside, and I liked that it was in a less crowded part of the city. I really liked seeing Venice, but there were a lot more tourists and crowds than I expected. I read in the travel book that the majority of people in the city each day are tourists, not actual residents. We grabbed some pizza for lunch and I got a pastry to eat as a snack on the train. The train ride was a lot more relaxing on the way back. We stopped at Burger King for dinner when we got off the train. That was a needed change from all the pizza and pasta I’ve been eating lately! Finally, we arrived back at the JFRC around 9:30 pm Saturday night.

Santa Maria della Salute

It still amazes me that we saw so many things in the 48 hours that we went to Venice. I feel like we were in Venice for a pretty good amount of time to see all of the major sights and I’m happy to say I had a great first trip!

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