Rome Unvisited: Part 1: VENEZIA (9.24

I'm sure my avid fan-base (mom and dad) has been waiting with bated breath for this update. Since I need to cover both my weekend trip to Venice, and THIS weekend in Naples and Pompeii, I'm splitting the post into two sections. Here goes part one...

Last weekend, the weekend of the 24th through 26th, Kate, Jacob, William, Andrew, and I went to Venice together! It was a 6.5 hour train ride, but the tickets we found were almost half the price of the express train. Once we got to the train station in Venice, it was just a short water bus ride to our hostel, which was on the opposite side of the grand canal, about a 30 minute walk, from the Piazza di San Marco. The hostel was called The Museum...I'd recommend it to any young person traveling to Venice. It's basically just a beautiful old palazzo with high ceilings, venetian chandeliers, and ornate moldings, staffed by a bunch of 18-23 year olds from Australia, New Zealand, and London, who took us out both nights we were there. There was also a 5 euro dinner they offered, which we ate the night we arrived. It turned out to be delicious -- pasta and quiche -- and was a good way to meet some of the other people staying at the hostel. It rained pretty hard on Friday night, but luckily the storm was over by mid-morning Saturday. Since we only had one day for sight seeing, we hit the ground running.

We got cappuccini and cornetti (pastries) at a caffè to get us going, and started making our way in the general direction of San Marco. En route, we passed through the big fish market, which was really cool to see. When we were almost at the square, we noticed some people tying plastic bags around their ankles to protect their feet. Then we saw that the entire piazza was flooded with about 5 inches of water from the rain plus overflow from the canals. I guess this is a pretty common occurrence, which the Venetians call "acqua alta" (high water). They had set up some raised walkways, but many tourists were either using the plastic bag method or simply rolling up their pants and wading through the water. We decided to go for the latter technique and waded through the piazza, which, despite the filthy water, was actually pretty cool. The sun was shining brilliantly and it almost seemed like Venice was sinking before our eyes. Once we got to the other side of the piazza -- there was no point even trying to get into the church at this point -- we headed for the Traghetto stop to take us across the canal to the Guggenheim. The Traghetti are simple wooden gondolas that cost about 50 euro cents to get to the other side of the grand canal. They turned out not to be running because of the acqua alta, so we just walked to the Ponte dell'Academia and got to the museum from there. The Guggenheim in Venice is one of my favorite museums, largely because of the setting, but also because of the amazing permanent collection, so it was fun to take my friends who'd never been before. We had tea and some lunch at the museum caffè after looking at the art, and then headed back toward San Marco. By the time we got back to the piazza only a few hours later, it was, oddly, completely dried out. Unfortunately we could only get a peek into the cathedral, because there was an exclusive mass hosting some important bishop that only Venetian priests were allowed to attend. After wandering more and freshening up at the hostel, we found a place to treat ourselves to dinner, called Osteria Vivaldi. I had a really good prosciutto and melon antipasto and the Vivaldi risotto with seafood. Even though we had to pack up and be at the train station by noon the next day, it felt like we'd fit a lot into the weekend and it was well worth the long travel days. We made it back to Rome just in time for family dinner on Sunday!

P.S. I've discovered a couple really excellent gelaterias in Rome: San Crispino and Gelateria del Teatro. I've been to San Crispino a couple times, and I think it remains my favorite. The first time I went I tried a combo of white fig and hazelnut/meringue, and the second time I had banana and caffè, each of which was absolutely perfect. Today we tried del Teatro for the first time, and I had sage/raspberry and white chocolate/basil. The sage/raspberry was delicious, and I want to try more of their flavors, but so far San Crispino takes the cake.

Part two coming very soon!