Thursday, September 13th- Friday, September 14th, 2012
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| That's Amore! |
With our second bike trip under our belts, we proceeded West to explore Italy. We decided to head to Milan as it was not too far south in the boot. Because we had not yet connected with anyone on couchsurfing in Milan, we decided to reserve a hostel. This is the only time we made a reservation and it ended up counting against us.
From Vienna we had to take three trains to Milan (all regional)- one to get to the border of Austria, another to cross Italy and into Verona, and a third to Milan. All was well on the first train, we arrived at the station and boarded onto the second train. The second stop on this train was a bit longer than most, so I decided to use the bathroom. This proved to be a bad time for it was a stop for the Italian border patrol to inspect the train and I had Alex and my passports on my person. I was in the restroom when all I hear is Alex shouting "She's in the restroom. She has my passport. Passport? Do you understand passport?!??" (probably omitting some expletives in there). From his account, the border patrol officers had come through the car and made a bee-line for him, demanding his passport and not understanding when he told them where I was with the passports. They were attempting to escort him out of the car while he was attempting to escort them to the bathroom. When just outside the restroom, I swung the door open, with my pants unbuttoned and his and my passport in hand. I'm sure that a bit of color rose in the cheeks of the officer closest to me. They looked at my passport and handed it back immediately, while writing down information from Alex's on some sort of list. I was asked to go back into the bathroom to finish my business, which I did quickly so as not to leave Alex with the officers who may or may not have decided to throw him off the train (this is the part where we realize how much Italian really isn't so much like speaking Spanish) We finally return to our seats, relieved to still be on the train, and pretty pissed at our terrible welcoming into Italy.
We spent some time talking with other people on the train and found that most were headed to the end of the line which was Venice. With no real rush, and a need for adventure, we decided to skip our train connection in Verona and go to Venice for a night. We ended up eating the cost of our first nights stay at our hostel in Milan, but it was well worth it.
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| city on the water |
We arrived in Venice a bit confused at how to figure out a place to stay for the night, so we went to the tourism office. Help from them came in the form of a bad photocopy of a list of hostels and hotels. We decided to head out to find a cheap and available one. Upon exiting the train station, we realized that Venice is not a place for bikes. It is not a place for wheelchairs and it is not a place for strollers. Venice is stairs, small walkways and canals, and thats what makes it so beautiful.
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| mmmm pizza |
Alex was quite the gentleman and offered to lift my bike as well as his up and down the stairs. He was in need of good massaging after that. We tried our hand at finding one of the hostels but wandered around the same streets for 20 minutes to no avail. We finally asked a woman at a small coffee shop who walked me to the place we were trying to find (it was listed as the wrong street number). We went back to the coffee shop to ask for another suggestion close by. I walked (Alex stayed with the bikes) and found a decent hostel that had cheap student rates and had space for us to store our bikes and our things even after we checked out the next day. When we were all settled we asked the very charming and well dressed receptionist (he is Italian after all) where we should go to get good pizza (of course). He pointed us in the direction of one not too far (so we couldn't get lost) and we indulged ourselves in the first of many pizzas in Italy. After that, we walked around and got lost for a bit, exploring the narrow corridors and deserted plazas. We returned to the hostel after a short while ready for sleep.
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| Pizza tricolore- ricotta, tomato, pesto |
The next day was absolutely beautiful. It was also positively crowded. But with bright blue skies, deep blue-green waters, and glittering buildings, it was easy to see why everyone goes or should go to Venice. We didn't use a map, preferring to get lost and flow with the ever increasing tourist crowd. We bought food from a grocery store and had a picnic out in the sunshine. Venice was extremely expensive (1.50 euro for bathrooms, 80 euro for a gondola ride- we skipped that one) but well worth it. We were definitely glad to have chosen the adventure.
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| love it |
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| jump right in the water's fine |
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| glittering buildings |
