Venice will always be a special place for me to visit, after my school exchange to this magical floating city.
After a fast train (250km/hr) from Naples, via Bologna, I was happy to be greeted by the somewhat familiar views of the Venetian Lagoon as my train pulled into Stazione Venezia Santa Lucia. I bought a Vaporetto (water bus) pass for my time here and made my way to the Venetian island of Giudecca where I was to be based for the next short while. I then got straight to a quick walkabout tour of Venice over to the Rialto Bridge.
It feels like is hasn’t changed a bit – totally amazing to feel familiar in a place so far from home. I continued through the street abbreviated by the occasional canal bridge through to Piazza San Marco.
Yes – there are still cheeky pigeons (‘piccioni sfaccianti’ in Italian which I just had to learn) in Piazza San Marco (and everywhere in Venice really).
What’s changed of course from my previous school-run trip is of course the fact that I can move around the city at any hour, rather than having to stick to planned day-trips. So I took the opportunity to walk around at night and try and get some night shots – here’s the best ones.
My stay here is focused somewhat on getting as much face-time with my busy Venetian friends that call this place home. Therefore I won’t be doing the main tourist attractions like last time – I’m actually really interested to see what kind of day-trips we can come up with to see some of the things that the broader Veneto region is famous for other than the city of Venice itself. Stay tuned to see how that turns out.