Venice !! Here we come !!! (Part 4 of "The Backpacking Trip")

 After a gruelling overnight train journey, we found ourselves in Venice in the morning. Well, can't really complain, being graduate students, we'd opted to travel in the nights, so we could save up on our accomodation expenses.Venice was every bit as wonderful as we had imagined and even more picturesque than we'd thought of. The canals and the waterways, added their own charm to this lovely city on the water. Once, we got out of the train, we had to search for 'water bus' stop. Yeah, you read it right. Since most of the city is on the water and connected by small bridges and narrow canals, there's not much of what we can call roads to drive buses and cars in the city. But there's a lot of narrow lanes which can be walked through, bridges which can be crossed and of course there are the water ways. You had an option to ride in a Water Taxi ( way too expensive for us students ), A gondola ( still expensive, but worth the experience. more on this later in this post ) or the 'Water Bus'.  You can liken the water bus to the public transport buses in the city of Mumbai. 

Now, the only problem being, we knew where we wanted to go 'The Backpackers Hostel' in Venice ( We new the street address too ), but didnt know how and our dumb-charades started. VC having travelled in Europe before, suggested we go to a tourist information booth. So we started looking for one and finally found one. Somehow, with a mixture of our bad attempts at dum charades and the relatively limited understanding of English that the Venetians we met had, we were able to figure out the 'Water Bus Number' and the 'Color' which would take us to the boys hostel. Yes - there was a number and color to these water buses. Finally after about an hour and a half of being physically present in Venice, we found ourselves aboard the correct Water Bus, which was headed towards our accomodation. All these waterways in Venice are on the waters of the Adriatic Sea. 

Finally, we checked into our hostel. The receptionist told us, we had 15 mins, to avail our daily free breakfast. Not that we were planning on a breakfast that morning, but as graduate students at heart, anything free sounded like a treat. Instead of going to our rooms, we headed straight to the cafetaria for our 'free' breakfast. What we got was very much befitting what a free breakfast would be. VC and I, each got one buttered croissant, a satchet of creamer, couple of pouches of sugar and a cup of coffee. We weren't really complaining, but finished this up and went off to our hostel rooms. 

Well, when I say room, we went to this huge hall, which had 20-30 beds a few feet apart. VC and I were lucky to be placed side by side. But in there, we found folks of various cultures and nationalities. It was an interesting experience. There were no cupboards or cabinets next to the beds. You could either place the luggage under the beds or in the lockers. The reception gave each of us a locker in the hostel which was associated to the bed number. Now we wanted to have a quick shower, but wait a minute, what was this ? These were community baths here. There was this big enough room with 20-30 showers and a few hooks and benches in one corner. Thats it. To us Indians, this felt a bit strange. Culturally, we aren't necessarily brought up like this. So we just observed how others were going about their business for a few minutes. Once, we felt we were ready, we took the 'proverbial plunge' into the showers. Just did all things quickly and were out of there. 

Now that we felt we'd figured out the water bus routes, we took the water bus to 'Piazza St, Marco'. This place is more amazing than what it looks like in pictures. It was amazing. We were lucky, in that we were in Venice during the 'Carnival of Venice' or the Venice Mask Festival. There were beautifully dressed men and women with exquisite masks all over the square. We had carried camera rolls ( yes, we didn't have our own digital cameras back then ), so we were limited by the number of rolls we had. But we tried to capture the best sights that we could see. 

The next thing on our to-do list was the 'Gondola ride'. We had read that Gondolas were very expensive around St. Marco's Square and then prices we checked out, confirmed what we had read. We had also read that Gondolas are cheaper to rent in the smaller canals, as opposed to the bigger touristy places around the Grand Canal. Again, we were able to find a cheap Gondola rental in one of the smaller canals and he offered to take us round trip via the Grand Canal So here we were in this Gondola - which was a long black gondola, with red velvet seats. The 'Gondolier' was dressed in black pants and striped t-shirts and wore a straw hat. As is their wont, he was singing sweet Italian songs. As and when we passed by any monuments, he would try and describe them to us in his broken English. A little while into our journey VC noticed, that folks along the banks or over the bridges on the Grand Canal, were literally pointing at the two of us seated in the Gondola and taking our pictures. VC was like 'AK, dude, these people think we are gay !!! Noooo !!! Yikes !!!!'. He jumped across to the seats on the opposite side of where I was seated. And here I was, without a care in the world for what these people were thinking. After all they didn't know, that I had just gotten engaged in India, a month ago... But so be it... Once our gondola ride was done, we tipped the 'Gondolier' and were on our way. 

As was the case on our trip, our lunches were light on the pocket and the dinners were lavish. We were taking in all that Venice had to offer. The road side seating available at the restaurants and coffee shops was a lovely experience. The cobbled pathways, the different bridges dotting the waterways, it was an amazing experience. Two days in Venice flew by way too quickly. Now we had a busy travel day the next day. A bus journey to 'Rome' but with a 'pit stop' in Florence to get a glimpse of 'The Leaning Tower of Pisa'. More about that trip soon. Ciao !!!!