Italy Diary Part Three - Venice

Part One - Part Two

After one week of traipsing around Italy, my family and I tiredly boarded the early train and so began the last leg of our trip-- to Venice. This is when my documentation begins to get wishy-washy. I had been keeping up with this trip by using the Notes app on my iPhone in preparation for writing these blog posts, but every night in Venice I would fall right into bed and decide that sleep overweighed everything else at the moment. Therefore, relying on these photos and the frankly absurd amount of iPhone pictures I took while on the trip, here is Venice.

When the train started pulling into our destination, it was quite bizarre to see all of the water. I mean, of course, Venice is built on water and there are no cars and transportation is either by foot or water taxi/vaporetto/gondola but it was still astonishing to see it in person. I feel as though the beauty of Venice was something I'd always dreamed about, but never thought I'd be able to see in person. But walking out of that station and truly seeing how we'd have to catch a boat and navigate through the strange public waterway transportation system, it suddenly seemed very real. And trust me, it's much better than those glossy photos you see in magazines. After figuring out the vaporetto, we finally made it to our hotel (aka an an apartment we were renting for a couple of days). We decided to walk to St. Mark's Square and look around that area, and the first thing I noticed was how many pigeons there were in the square. The pigeons absolutely adored the tourists because there were people who, if paid a couple euros, would give you pigeon feed to offer to the pigeons. The pigeons would then go wild for the food, flying all of your arms and sitting in your hands to eat. Anyways, more on that later.

We then walked out of the square towards the Grand Canal, which is probably one of the most heavily tourist populated areas in all of Venice but rightly so due to the beauty of the area. I spent a lot of time sitting on the docks, people watching and seeing the gondolas pass by. There is also the Ponte dei Sospiri, or the Bridge of Sighs. It was said that the view from this bridge was the last that prisoners would see of Venice before imprisonment, and that they would sigh at the beauty of their final view.

While I was here, there was a beautiful Italian couple getting their wedding photos taken, followed by two photographers and a videographer. I overheard someone say "This looks straight from Pinterest" and I had to wholeheartedly agree. Of course, I couldn't stop myself from taking photos of them as well.

We spent the rest of the day exploring and getting lost in the small streets. I actually loved the fact that there are no cars in Venice-- no honking or car exhaust or another beautiful building facade blocked by a row of vehicles-- and instead there are boats of all different kinds. Dinner was at Rossopomodoro, which allegedly has the best pizza in Venice, and I do not contest that statement. I'm not even a pizza person, and I loved the pizza we ate there. It had started to rain while we were eating, so we bought a 3 euro umbrella and ran across an empty St. Mark's Square, laughing as the flimsy umbrella broke in the wind.

We returned to our apartment and I noticed that the view outside the window was absolutely glorious.

That night we went back out and walked around the square again. I didn't take my camera, but at this point I was beginning to realize I was really stuck on documenting and needed to step away from my camera from time to time. What I remember is: the relief of cool night air after a long day of walking in humidity, lights shining on the gorgeous architecture of the palace, the musical quartets playing well into the night of classics that the crowds clapped along to, feeling like there was something magic about the Italian night.

Our second day was spent exploring again. We walked along the beautiful streets with its vibrantly colored buildings and came to understand that the point of Venice is not to go about it in an orderly fashion. Every street has its own beauty.

Back to the pigeons in St. Mark's Square- I wrangled up the guts and paid one of the people in the square to dump these rice kernels in my hands and then I, like some sort of scarecrow pigeon saint, lifted my arms and summoned at least 5 pigeons. They proceeded to land on my arms with feathery flaps and eat the food with gusto. You should have seen my face, I was so delighted I didn't know what to do with myself. One of the top ten most bizarre, yet cool experiences of my life. My parents took a video of it happening and the entire thing is me looking like an excited kid in a candy store. Also, it didn't hurt at all! These are phone photos but I just had to include them.

We then decided to be very touristy and take an (incredibly overpriced) gondola ride to the Grand Canal. Our gondolier was really nice and told us a lot of facts about the city. The ride definitely offered a very unique perspective of Venice. After that, we had an absolutely lovely dinner at a restaurant right next to the canal.

I remember this evening being so lovely. The food was delicious (a lot of seafood!), we had a great conversation with another couple from America at a table text to us, and then we walked around in the oncoming dusk.

Aw hey look a family picture :)

Our last day in Venice started out cloudy as we took a vaporetto to the island of Murano. I had been looking forward to going on this island for the entire trip, and was very disappointed when I realized the weather was not the best for taking photos (clouds make for really white skies and therefore lots of harsh light, causing photos to become overexposed). However, the few photos that I did take managed to capture the quaint colorful little buildings. Also, there was a cat sleeping in a windowsill. It was incredibly picturesque.

After Murano, we headed back to the main island. Although I have no non-iPhone photos from it, this night we had the best meal of our entire trip. There was squid ink pasta and delicious seafood and wonderful dessert.

My last experience of Venice is of waking up at 5 AM and taking the vaporetto to the train station. Everything was very still and the only people out and about were on their way to early morning work. We climbed on the boat with all of our suitcases and bags, watching the sun slowly rise in the sky and paint the buildings orange.

After a long train ride to Rome and then bus ride to the airport, we sleepily made it onto our plane back to America. My thoughts on Venice? It is one of the most beautiful places I've ever been to so far in my 18 years of life. There's a certain picturesque charm about the city that is impossible to shake off after experiencing because nothing quite compares, anywhere else in the world. You'll just have to see it for yourself.

And so my Italy Diaries series ends. My hope with these posts is to transport anyone reading and looking at my photos into the moments that I've experienced in my travels. Although I am no tour guide, I truly hope that these posts have given a little insight on these places. If you're traveling to any of these cities, or simply want travel advice, I would love to answer any questions you have.
But also, these posts are for me-- as a way of remembering and documenting, of appreciating what I experienced in the past. As a photographer I feel as though I have a responsibility to document and to frame moments into something that I can comprehend sometime in the future. One day I'll look back and think: "I can't believe I've actually been there. Let's look at pictures to relive it" and these will be right here, along with my commentary. Finally, I've learned that travel is the most exhausting yet worthwhile experience that you can have. One of my favorite quotes goes like this: "I haven't been everywhere, but it's on my list". My advice is to go out there and check off places until you make it to everywhere. It'll be the best kind of adventure.

Happy travels, or buon viaggio! x

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