It was only about a three hour, air conditioned bus ride to Venice from Florence. Nothing looks more touristy than a double decker charter bus full of college students. The group arrived in Venice at the canal where we took a rocky boat ride that dropped us off closer to our hotel. The Hotel Messner wasn't exactly ideal but we were only there for about 7 hours a day to sleep with the mosquitos so it wasn't terrible.
I'm that kind of person who drives everywhere, even when I'm a couple blocks away from work. I'll drive. It startled me when they said it was a car-free part of town where we were staying. The locals use boats to commute. Buy a ticket and a boat will drop you off at docks in various locations around Venice. They had water taxi's that apparently if you call one and cancel, you pay big bucks. The gondala's that are pretty notorious in Venice weren't cheap either. I guess transportation here in "luxury" is mainly geared towards tourists which was practically everyone.
Jenny,
ReplyDeleteIf you look back at the Venice assignment, I was asking you to do a couple of things for this blog post. I think you're short a few of them.
Your writing about the locals using boats to commute fits the "customs and rituals that strike you as different," but it's pretty obvious. What were some more subtle things that you noticed while walking around the city, dining or shopping?
You described the trip up there just fine, but it wasn't a place in Venice we visited. Wouldn't the Aerosmith concert, or the exhausting and hideously hot walking tour have been better choices?
I also wanted you to capture some dialogue you overheard from an interesting conversation, and a "lede" or beginning of a story you might tell from this trip.
Your photos work well.
Want to revise? I can show you how to "edit" a post, if you need help. Just let me know if you revise and I'll review it again...