The train ride to Venice from Bergamo was a little fraught. It was a 3.5-hour journey with two six-minute transfers between busy regional trains. Italian rail seems to love keeping platform options open, we had found that often platofrm numbers weren’t announced until minutes before the scheduled departure time. But this time we got caught with a change in platform. We arrived super early for our first train, saw it schedule for platform 5 so set up camp there. Five minutes before it’s due to leave I’m thinking, there’s no one else on this platform, what is happening? I look over and see the same destination is on the platform 3 noticeboard. Grabbed the bags and we ran down the stairs and back up the other (now with TWO cases), much to the amusement of the station workers. The train was packed to the gills so I had to stay wit the cases in front of the door while Bitti took the one spare seat in the carriage.
Later in the journey a seat near the doors became free so I sat there, keeping an eye on our bags. Near the end of that leg as the doors opened at a station an older man walked up to my bags, looking a little too purposeful. He went to pick up the black case so I jumped up and intercepted him. He looked confused, looking around as if he had left his own bag that looked like mine there and it had disappeared. He then proceeded to walk up and down, in and out of our carriage for the next ten minutes, still ‘searching’. Another passenger had seen me stop him and he was watching this guy too, also bewildered. In the end my bags were safe and he didn’t try anything else, but it did make me nervous how he kept circling back. Eventually we made it to Venezia Mestre and to our immaculate Air BnB run by a Korean-Italian couple.
So look, I may not have been doing my Italy research in the right places. Our travel group was inspired to watch The Gladiator after visiting Rome, R and A watched Under the Tuscan Sun the night before heading to Tuscany, and I based all my expectations for Florence on A Room with a View. Venice did not escape the unwise media pre-gaming, and perhaps was the worst of all as I actually went so far as to fuck up my whole Netflix algorithm by watching The Tourist.
I love Ang more than is probably healthy given that she and I have never met, but I did struggle to watch over an hour of her heavily eye-lined face strutting around in highly impractical heels, and the slow speed boat chase scene was just too much to bear. I assign Johnny Depp to the category of person ‘looks like he smells awful’, and this film did little to dispel that impression. What with the objectionable goatee and inexplicably puffy cheeks combined with frizzy hair that rather too closely resembles my own untameable vacation mess, it was all so far from sexy that I could hardly recall the meaning of the word. However, having now visited Venice I did recognise some of the views, so that was something. I did not notice Angelina walking through any industrial zones or ship building yards though, which is how Bitti and I entered the city.
We stayed on the mainland, to save about $34,999. A 15-minute bus ride took us into Venice proper, and we did that the first night we arrived. This was probably a mistake as it wasn’t the best experience. We walked about five minutes from the bus stop, found a restaurant that wasn’t too fancy and ordered the worst meal of our trip so far. Tortellini with a cream sauce. It didn’t light me on fire and I ate about four of the pastas before giving up. Bitti ate a hot dog and had the far better end of it.
We got gelato on the way back to the bus, and that turned out to be so bad I actually threw mine in the bin. I have never met an ice cream I couldn’t finish before! Bitti capped off the night by expressing her disappointment at the water street city, saying there should not be footpaths, why aren’t we in a boat, this is NOT what I was promised!!!
After a big sleep and a nice breakfast in the Korean-Italian style we tried against the next day. This was much more successful. I stupidly bought a day pass for the taxi bus. Turned out you can really just get on board without buying a ticket, no one is checking. We fought our way through the crowds to board the first boat and end up bobbing around downstairs for as many stops as I could near before my stomach turned. We alighted at an abandoned dock and headed down some very narrow, alarmingly empty, graffiti-strewn backstreets.
My map told us we were close to the Peggy Guggenheim museum, my instincts told me we were one wrong turn away from death. Bitti was delighted. She has been obsessed with Tin Tin for a while now, and this was yet another chance for her to act out an episode. I alternately play Snowy and Captain Haddock. The captain is best because he’s always drunk. Just as Tin Tin was about climb over a wall to escape yet another naughty man, we ran into the museum … to find it closed on Tuesdays.
Never mind, Bitti was enthused now. We stumbled around more streets for another hour. Wandering into churches, crossing countless bridges and occasionally coming across a little cafe or series of artisans’ shops. I feel we went to places many tourists don’t by walking around this way. But eventually I did try to steer us to the bigger landmarks. We had a lovely lunch in a small piazza with yet another statue of a man in the centre. They all have statues of men in them. I have no idea who all these men are, but clearly they thought themselves very important. To be honest the statues are the start of it, if you possess a trouser snake and haven’t built a castle, bridge or railway station in honour of yourself (ostensibly to the people of [insert town name]), did you really even exist?
We eventually made it to Piazza San Marco which had a very impressive Basilica and Campanile. Bitti actually wanted to go inside something for once! So we lined up for about 20 minutes to get up the top of the bell tower. It is 99 metres high and was absolutely terrifying for me. She loved it though, trying to climb up on the stone edge to get a better look. We then tried to enter the Basilica at my insistence, but even though I managed to cajole her into it, I was turned away at the entrance for having a bag with me 😦
The next pit stop for me was the Rialto bridge. We took a rather circuitous route there, I swear we walked past the same shops several times. I was surprised to find a McDonalds and other chain stores there. For some reason I thought they would try to preserve the old-worldiness of the place. We saw a lot of fabulous blown glass art and jewellery. I wished we could have bought something but I am confident it would have been smashed before we left Italy.
We stayed until dusk, I had a terrific lasagne in a cute little back street restaurant. Then we caught a water bus back to the land bus. This time the trip was a bit nicer, we had a stunning view of the grand canal at sunset; Bitti was hanging over the side of the boat imagining she was in a gondala (I had said no to an 80 Euro per person ride).
I originally had no plan to stop at Venice, but when it was decided that Bitti would come on the trip I added it as a novelty for her. But we both enjoyed our day in the end. Yes, it was extremely expensive, yes it was filled to the brim with annoying tourists (we saw a few ‘stop the cruise ships’ signs hanging off balconies), but it still holds enough charm to overlook those drawbacks.
Two Little Travellers 