Episode 14 - Dennis in Venice 🇮🇹
Boats, canals, and the most beautiful human on Earth
My first time in Italy! Venice! How tremendously exciting.
Wednesday 11/1/2023
After getting on the train in Vienna following a night of drinking with Poles and playing lots of pool with Carlo, I fell asleep immediately.
I woke up in Italy, with the Dolomite Mountains out the window in their full glory. It was the most beautiful train ride of my entire life.
The train ride was smooth sailing, and I was sitting across from a Romanian girl.
She was one of the sassiest people I’ve ever met in my entire life.
Not quite as sassy or sarcastic as me when I’m fully locked in, but top 3 sassiest people I’ve met for sure. She was easy to annoy for fun, and she was playing along well. I can be incredibly annoying when I want to. It’s one of my skills.
I wonder if all Romanians are as sassy as her.
We made it to Venice after the 7-hour train ride and the Grand Canal was right outside the train station as soon as we walked out.
I walked around for a bit while waiting for the boat bus. Venice is full of canals and has over 400 bridges, and the only public transport available in the city are the large boats that take people around. It was unlike anything that I’ve ever seen.
Tons of people just queued up to wait for a boat to take them wherever they needed to go. Our hostel in Venice was on an island, so we had to take the boat bus to get there!
The hostel was quite nice and the staff at the front desk spoke English with an Italian accent. It was lovely. Our hostel room had 16 beds, of which none were taken yet. Nice!
We dropped off our things, then went back to the boat bus to the main island.
I was extremely hungover and we were all starving, so we popped over to a pizzeria and all got massive pizzas. I also got a large Coke to bring up my blood sugar. Nice!
After our lunch, we stopped by the Guggenheim Museum to check out some modern art. Modern art has never been my cup of tea, but it was a lovely museum design and we breezed through it all in about 45 minutes. I saw Jackson Pollock’s first-ever painting where he put the canvas on the ground and splashed paint all over it, and saw perhaps my favorite paintings ever.
Basically, it was a house in the nighttime while the sky behind showed daytime. There is a solitary streetlamp in the middle of the painting that lights up the house in an ethereal way. The skill required to paint something like that is unimaginable to me.
After the Guggs, we continued checking out the rest of Venice. We saw grand churches, lots of canals, and St. Mark’s Square (along with its Basilica)! I also called Mama in Venice to show her the lovely architecture. I really enjoyed the narrow, packed streets and the canals weaving their way through the cities, full of gondolas and tourists. It was quite exciting.
We found a nice, quiet bar where we all got a glass of Italian red wine and chatted it up with some Brits from Leeds. They had met on a cruise ship when working there together and had traveled around the world together, even Antarctica. It was so lovely to meet them.
Eventually, we made it to the large bridge (Rialto Bridge) that crosses the Grand Canal and snapped some photos. We sat along one of the docks for a bit for a break, then stopped at a nice restaurant along the Grand Canal for dinner. Our waiter was Albanian and quite clearly fancied Emma.
It was so clear that he brought her a large class of expensive wine, for free.
Joe and I had to buy our own wine. I understand the sentiment, though. Emma has a beautiful soul.
The waiter’s name was Ronalda. Sick. I prefer Messi, though.
After the lovely dinner (I got lasagna), we walked back to the boat station, took the boat bus back to our hostel, and headed to bed early to leave for Milan in the morning.
I ended up reading some more chapters from the A Waiter in Paris book (what a GREAT book!) and waited for my photos to sync to iCloud. As a result, it was midnight when I went to sleep.
Thursday 11/2
Woke up at 8 am and we were out of the hostel by 9. We took the boat bus across the sea (river?? big canal??) and walked over with all of our things to a café that Emma’s Dutch friend said had food that was absolutely “life-changing”.
It was certainly good, but definitely not life-changing. I would say nothing to write home about, but I’m clearly writing about it here. They had deep-fried Mozzarella balls and yummy coffee. They also had pigeons that walked around the store eating crumbs. I held the door open for one on the way out, it even bowed to me.
The pigeons in Venice are the most sophisticated ones I have ever seen!
We wandered around the neighborhood a little bit and randomly found a barber. Me needing a haircut, I booked an appointment for an hour later, then we headed to the Venetian Arsenal.
The arsenal is considered to be the first factory in the world and is where Venice constructed warships to conquer the Adriatic Sea in its heyday. It was a little underwhelming tbh but still, I’m glad we walked across Venice to see it.
We walked back toward the Venice train station, then Joe and Emma headed to a cafe for lunch while I got my haircut.
What a great barbershop find!
The barber was an Albanian (lots of them here) named Marcel and cut my hair very nicely in 30 minutes for 25 euros. Even Emma complimented me and said it was much better than whatever Joe got in Paris. To be fair, it’s not a high standard that my cut was being compared to. Marcel wants to open his own barbershop one day, I hope he does!
Venetian haircut, secured.
I took the boat bus back to the train station while it started raining. The engines of the boats roar every time they accelerate or decelerate, and the conductor would do this really cool thing of lassoing the boat to the boat bus station pier before opening the gates and letting people exit and enter the boat. The rope was incredibly strong, and the conductor never missed. It was very cool to witness.
I made it onto the train 5 minutes before it left, and sat into the same car as Joe and Emma by coincidence. Next to them was this Italian uni student from Padua, Vittoria, who was one of the prettiest humans I have ever seen with my own eyes. I guess my fresh cut gave me confidence, because I flirted with her for 15 minutes before our train transfer, successfully got an invitation for coffee at her home in Padua (but Emma and Joe said we had to go to Milan, what a bunch of losers), and got her Instagram.
We switched trains, never to see Vittoria again. I wrote my Vienna blog on the way to Milan before we made it there in the afternoon.
I still think about Vittoria. Simply wow. And she was funny, too.
Some key things about Venice:
Boats are sick. They are everywhere. You cannot escape them when canals are everywhere! The children that are raised there must think that boats are everywhere. It must be strange for them when they venture out outside Venice for the first time.
Must-dos: Saint Mark’s Square, Rialto Bridge, and riding the boats everywhere. It’s a blast!
Generator Hostel is nice but not as nice as Wombat Hostel in Munich and Vienna.
Italian women are gorgeous.
Some more pictures!
