Visiting Venice: Week 3

I’m entering my 3rd week here in Italy and so far it has been some of the best times of my life. I’ve gone to a little medieval town Called Assisi. Which I would have never visited or heard of if it wasn’t for my medieval Rome class. I’ve gone to multiple beautiful churches that have beautiful works of art and extraordinary stories. I have also visited many sites in Rome through group tours where we went to see the Colosseum, Constantinople Arch, and the Roman Forum. Independently I have also gone to the Trevi Foundation with a new friend I made at the beginning of the semester. We have planned many trips together which I’m really excited about. This week was our first big trip, which was to Venice, Italy. We chose this city since we knew that this might be one of the last chances we have to visit this beautiful city before it sinks in the near future. From Rome to Venice it was about a 7-hour bus ride which was not as bad as I thought it would be. What I’ve learned here is that if you want to travel around Italy, one of the cheapest forms of transportation is the bus. Tickets can go from 8 euros to 30 euros depending on when you buy them and where you’re traveling to. It’s usually better to buy your tickets in advance in order to save the most money. For example, our tickets to Venice were about 10 euros each round trip which is amazing since a plane ticket can cost up to $100. We also used Airbnb and Expedia to find places to stay at affordable prices. Traveling can be a stressful experience but for me personally, it makes it less stressful when I spend less money. Once we got to Venice it was such an amazing experience, you cross this really long bridge in order to get to Venice which is an island (I did not know this until I got there). Once there we were dropped off in a certain area because cars or buses are not allowed to enter the actual city, which I found nice since we didn’t have to worry about cars and other vehicles. We then started exploring the sights and they were very beautiful. I mostly liked seeing the gondolas in the river just cruising around while the person steering the gondolas sang as loud as they could. The buildings there were also very beautiful, you could tell how old they were and they were all really tall. The streets were like mazes; they were so small and winding you could easily get lost if it wasn’t for the signs leading you to the major spots in town. Over the course of the day, we visited Rialto Bridge, St. Mark’s Basilica, Bridge of Sighs, and many more beautiful areas. I also bought myself a masquerade mask since I would be missing Venis Carnival in February but it looked like they were getting ready for the festival. Overall I really enjoyed my time here and I can’t wait to tell you guys about my trip to Naples and Pompeii next week!