Venice Week-end 18-20 Nov 2005

Welcome to paradise !

But, I need to decide whether I found the city paradisque or not.

I started my journey on 18^th November from Beauvais airport some 70 kms and an hour and half from Paris city. The reason behind this journey was:

1. To get some rest from stressful life of Paris and relax.

2. To meet an uncle (my dad’s childhood friend) who was coincidently in Italy.

Way out & Ostello

Having limited budget for my adventure, I decided to find a youth hostel or dormitory for the 2 nights I was to stay. Surprisingly, I found over the internet hostel Santa Fosca: http://www.santafosca.com/statiche/ostello/servizi.asp

And the return flight to-fro Venice by Ryanair http://www.ryanair.com/ . I shall guide and hence share my week-end experience with you.

Access to Beauvais airport from Porte de Maillot: bus (13€). Beauvais airport is small airport handling only low-cost airliners.

Voilà I landed on Venice airport in the night and took a bus from Treviso airport for Venice city.

Welcome to beauty! I stepped my foot inside a bateau for the first time. Venice is a city abundant with water, and, boats or vaporettos are the major mode of transport. Air seemed to be fresh, tinge of cold et c’est parti.

I was there for 2 days and 2 nights, the week-end of 19^th November.

As I booked the hostel for Friday night, I took my way through narrow pathways, guessing my way over few bridges. It was cold and dark, yet it was beautiful. There were some young people roaming around, must be backpackers as myself.

Finally I reached Ostello Santa Fosca late at night, thanks to kindheartedness of Erika, the girl at the reception who agreed to keep the room keys outside the hostel (It would have been risky).

Day 1, Uncle St. Marco et all

The next morning, I woke up early to discover the city myself. Mornings are different than afternoons and afternoons are tiring than evenings. So, I started for my discovery crossing streets, narrow lanes, and small bridges looking at people, local & otherwise noticing their activities and sensing the air of Venice morning life.
You can roam around Venice very easily; it’s a small city with well connected lanes and by-lanes. But, at times it becomes confusing because there are no signboards or if there are, they are old or hidden somewhere.
In the afternoon after having my breakfast, I went to Santa Lucia railway station (I will tell about this station later in the write-up) to meet my uncle who was arriving from Trieste, a small Italian city near Venice.
After freshening up, we decided to discover more of Venice à pied and take the boat to visit nearby islands the day after.
We crossed some streets, between the hush and rush of off-season visitors, (still there were many) and reached San Marco. A very beautiful palace museum with gold studded interiors and exteriors. The palace (now converted into museum) has huge courtyard to welcome ever-growing number of visitors, the entrance to the courtyard occupied by expensive jewel merchants on two sides and continued with Grand Canal on one and general shops on the other. Inside the palace there is huge veranda linked to 4 parts of museum, and the bloody (chiant) thing is you have to start from one end and come from another; you can’t come down and revisit one area or start from the middle. Maybe it happened with us because we entered late. The museum closes at 5 in the evening!
Indeed, it’s a beautiful museum palace worth visiting with stunning interiors.
Now regarding food, if you are looking for Italian specialties, you would get it here, but as it’s not “that” famous Italian food, I was obliged to eat fast-food (paninis, pizzas) and buy some stuff from BILLA supermarket for morning breakfast.

Day 2, The three islands Murano, Burano, Torchello

Next day after having a long chat with beautiful Erika, (she reminded me of Botticelli’s painting) and getting some travel tips from her, we set our feet upon vaporetto to visit nearby islands of Murano & Burano. Inspite of Venice’s beauty, I was quite bored by commercialization of the city and was thinking that Paris is better (I can’t compare the cities as both have their own space in western architecture and culture).

Murano was a good surprise as it’s an island of Glass manufacturer with factories and free shows (showing the art of glass making). Of course, there are shops everywhere as it’s the main revenue of the island. We were shocked to be warned by one of the shopkeepers to be bewaring of “glass-like” plastic objects made in China.
I strongly feel for these Italian glass manufacturers who can loose their business and extinct their talent due to cheap invasion of cheap Chinese products. Anyway, it was worth visiting. I bought some gifts for my cotenants and stored the memory of this beautiful island in my heart and digital camera.
Next hop was island of Burano, a very beautiful place to visit, almost like heaven, it has specialty of its own;houses painted in bright colors, windows decorates with plants and flowers (even though it might be intentional) .. just eye-catching ! A small island though, covered within few minutes of walk.
Next was Torchello, or called old Venice, people say its beautiful, but I don’t know why? Everybody has their perception. There are 3 medieval churches and rest of the island is barren… beauty aside, it was quite boring and I had a haste to return to Venice.