Travel Day 15 – A Storm Brewing
It’s finally time to explore Venice some more. I absolutely love the canals and bridges all around Venice. Every time I cross one I have to stop and take a picture. This is my absolute favourite city, and o need to capture every moment I have. We woke up late (again). I think we’re finally starting to wear out with all this walking we’re doing and the lack of fruits and veggies we’ve had. We quickly threw on clothes and ran down to the bar/restaurant in the hostel to grab a buffet token before they closed. Lucky we were in time and filled our plates (and thank goodness they have fruit!).
We left around 12:00 to head over to the island. The weather has been gorgeous but in the forecast today there is supposed to be a thunderstorm around 17:00. With that in mind, we set out. The water bus is about 10 minutes to get over to Piazza San Marco and with our ACTV passes (we got the 7 day pass and it has been worth every penny so far) we can travel anywhere as much as we’d like. First we went over to stand in line for the Doge’s Palace, but after 5 minutes in the online ticket line with about 100 people ahead of us decided it would be more worth our time to come early in the morning. We continued to explore around the center part of Venice, making our way over to the Rialto Bridge. This bridge is truly the heart of Venice, and it’s also the heart of the shopping district. The entire bridge is filled with vendors and tourists, much like all other major attractions, and gleaming with jewelry and other baubles. We continued to explore now on the West Bank of Venice and found a little Jazz themed restaurant in behind the major streets and shops. The pizza there was quite good, but not as amazing as Florence in my opinion. Still it was on the cheaper side and filled the stomach well, especially being a full pizza each.
As we ate lunch, we heard thunderclaps constantly near the end of the meal. We thought best to make our way back to the hostel as we had no intention getting caught in a thunderstorm. On our way back we ventured a bit more east before making our way south to an ACTV stop and then back to the hostel.
Before we headed back to the hostel Dean recommended we run to the church just down the way from the hostel. It was stunning and had one of the best views of the city! Once we got down THEN we went to the hostel to relax a bit.
We took a quick nap, I uploaded the blog (it took almost 30 minutes yet again to post the pictures) and we decided to get some burgers at the restaurant in the hostel. We have eaten nothing but pasta and pizza (carbs for days) so it was time for a change.
While eating dinner we met Cassy from California, Shu from Germany, Tom (our roommate) from England, Tony from Mexico City (but on his 9th month of travelling), Mikela and Linnea from Sweden (more Swedish friends!). We all ended up talking for about 4 hours and as the night went on a few trickled off. Dean hit the hay around 1:30 and I ended up meeting a few more guys from Australia, Connecticut and New Jersey. About 7 of us walked around the island with a couple of drinks till about 3:00 when I had to call it quits and the rest went over to Venice. Oh did I mention there was a gorgeous thunderstorm over Venice while we were all our for a walk?! There’s the saying that goes, “nothing good ever happens after 2:00am” but I think I have to add an hour to that rule. It was a great time talking with everyone and getting to know more not just about all of them but also about our different countries and communities. This truly has been the trip of a lifetime, and I really do plan to come out and visit you all when travelling some more in the future. To all of you if I don’t see you again (this trip and if you’re reading this), the best of luck in your travels and adventures. I truly hope to see you sooner than later. To everyone else, until tomorrow!
~Spencer
📸 Credit to Dean on his Google Pixel 2. I didn’t actually take any pictures of the storm 😢
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Thanks for the read!
