My Europe Trip 2010 – Venice, Italy

Among the many cities I have visited during my Europe trip, Venice could be considered the least interesting one despite being well known for its tourism industry, which is why I am so reluctant to continue updating my Europe trip posts. Who wants to write about uninteresting things, right? But to be fair, our Venice experience was marred largely due to bad weather, as it rained continuously for days even though it was summer. According to the locals, 2010′s summer was the weirdest they ever experienced.

The two fastest way to get to Venice from Rome is via train or flight. For train Eurostar is the fastest option but it would still take about 4-6 hours to reach, and it is also the most expensive option. To save time, we took a flight via Easy Jet instead, €66 for two tickets and the the flight duration was only about one hour.
But note that this duration is not yet inclusive of the time taken to travel from Termini station to Rome Fiuminico (Rome International Airport terminal 2) via the Leonardo Express plus the bus ride from Marco Polo (Venice Airport) to Piazzale Roma (Venice’s gateway for land transportation) via ATVO Fly Bus. So in total you still need to spend at least 2-3 hours to really reach Venice from Rome. Also, be prepared to fork out at least €17-20 extra for the airport journeys.

By the time we reached Venice it was already around 6pm and the sky was still bright. The clear blue sky got us excited about the next two days we were going to spend at Venice. But sadly, the weather was only good on that particular day.

There are a few supermarkets like Coop and Billa around Piazzale Roma and if you are planning to get any groceries, I suggest you do so immediately before proceeding to your hostel. This will save you some precious time of having to walk all the way here again later. Trust me on my experience, you wouldn’t want to do that.
If you have doubts about which hostel to get, I would gladly recommend the one we stayed at called B&B Ai Musici. A clean and comfy 6 bed dorm with excellent shower cost us €28 per pax/night. And not to mention the owner is very helpful too.

Another tip is the souvenir shop next to this hostel is one of the cheapest we could find at Venice and we got ourselves some really nice Murano Glass and Venetian Masks there.

The iconic gondolas, they are everywhere. If you are wondering, no I did not try the gondola rides simply because of the cut throat prices, it just seemed a little crazy.

Brek, a bar and restaurant located just opposite our hostel was recommended by the owner for its cheap food. We ended up having most of our meals there since the other restaurants’ prices were really touristy. Another main reason we choose to eat here is because of its location. Brek is located just a bridge across our hostel, very convenient.

You can find mostly panini (sandwich), pasta and food like pork chop and grilled seafood here. The prices hover around €4-5 for a main course. To be honest the food isn’t great but we couldn’t really complain anyway.