Three Days in Venice

My Adventure

Hello everyone! If you haven't seen my last blog post (Four Fantastic Days in Florence), make sure you check that our before reading this.

The next location that I went to after visiting Florence was Venice, and this was the last stop that I made in Italy. I think that Venice was the most unique place that I visited on my whole adventure to Europe. Although Venice is considered an island, it is still connected to the mainland, but there are no cars allowed on the “island”, so the only transportation besides walking is by boat. We were only in Venice for 3 days, so my family and I decided that once we arrived in Venice, we were going to make the most of each day that we were there. When we arrived, it was about 12:00 in the afternoon and we quickly headed out of the train station so that we wouldn't miss our boat ride over to the part of the island where we were staying. We got on the boat and when we arrived at our hotel, we unpacked and headed out to explore. There were so many amazing things that I had read about Venice online, and I had no idea how we were supposed to fit everything into three days. We started by going to a local restaurant to get lunch, and then went to a nearby church. After looking at the church for about an hour, we decided that it would be nice to just walk around outside and see if there was anything interesting that we might bump into. We saw amazing architecture and waterways and eventually found the place where we would be eating dinner. After dinner, we walked around the island for a few more hours and then decided to return to the hotel.

The next morning, we decided that we would walk over to the Rialto Bridge and get a good view of Venice. When we arrived, there were hundreds of people, but the view was amazing. We spent about 30 minutes on the bridge just looking at the view and taking pictures. When we decided that we were finally done with he crowds of people, we went down the other side of the bridge to a local market. We saw fresh fish and produce, but had no room for it in our hotel, so we just ended up buying some fruit and continued to explore. We walked for about an hour, and eventually found our way around to a branch of the island that gave us an amazing view and a nice quiet area to relax and take in everything that we had seen in the past few days.  We sat near the water for a few minutes and then decided to look into one of the buildings nearby. We took a few quiet pathways back towards our hotel and discovered a place for dinner and desert. After dinner, we did what we had been looking forward to the entire time… a gondola ride!! Although it was dark when we did the boat ride, and there weren't many chances for great pictures, it was a great time to take a break from the social world and take in the extravagant and exciting culture that was happening all around us. After about two hours, we finished our gondola ride, and returned to our hotel.

The next an final morning, we packed up the things we had, due to the fact that we had to leave the hotel by 11:00 am. We got some breakfast and returned to the hotel to pick up our bags. We got our bags and checked out of the hotel, but we still had a few hours before our train left to go to Munich, so we decided that we would walk around Venice for the last time with all of our luggage (bad idea). The streets in Venice are all cobblestone which made wheeling out bags that much harder, so we eventually just had to carry our bags which was a little difficult. Then the time came to get on the boat that would be taking us back to the train station. We arrived at the station after about 20 minutes, and hustled over to board our overnight train to Munich, Germany.

Look for a new blog post soon which will explain 3 tips when visiting Venice. If you enjoyed this blog post, please let me know by liking it, and by following me on instagram or bloglovin, or leaving a comment. To contact me, my email is alexadventures3@gmail.com. Thank you so much. Talk to you next week!

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3 Tips When in Florence

1.) Research

• Make sure you know what you are going to see because there are a lot of things in Florence, and you want to make sure that you know what you can fit into your schedule.

2.) Don’t over-schedule 

• In tip number one, I said make sure that you can fit everything into your schedule, but that doesn’t mean cram everything in so that you don’t have any free time.
• One of the things that I enjoyed the most about Florence was walking around on a tour and seeing something that looked interesting, but that wasn't included on my tour. This meant that I would write it down and come back later when I had an open spot in my schedule.

3.) Location, not Popularity

• Don't always assume that the most popular spots are the best places to visit. Although you will probably end up going to the popular tourist attractions, some of the best spots that I discovered were basically “secret,” but we found them because of their central location.

Four Fantastic Days in Florence

My Adventure

Hello Everyone! If you haven’t read my previous blog (Seven Spectacular Days in Rome), check that out before reading this.

My family and I left in the morning from Rome, and arrived in Florence at around noon. The weather was beautiful, and with so much history in Florence, and so little time to see everything we made the best of our time. We went from the train station to our hotel near central Florence. After being on a train for the whole morning, we left our hotel in search for a place to eat. Walking around in the middle of the day was amazing. There were so many things going on, and the architecture of the buildings was amazing to experience firsthand after seeing it so many times in pictures. After finding a good place to eat lunch, we continued walked around Florence. We found the Duomo, and some of the other buildings that we would be going into on a later date with our tour guide. After exploring for a few hours, we found a place to eat dinner, and went to bed.

The next morning, we woke up early because we had to meet our tour guide outside of our hotel. We explored museums and other well known places in Florence such as the Duomo. Our tour guide showed us different churches and houses of historical figures in Florence’s past. After exploring Florence, for the morning, we went to the most recommended place to eat in Florence, where I had the best lunch of my entire vacation. After lunch, we got some gelato, and went through the local marketplace to find items for friends and family. We spent the rest of our day at the marketplace, and after finding a local restaurant to eat, we went to bed early after a busy day. 

We slept in the next morning, but as soon as we were ready to go, we started exploring some parts of Florence that we hadn’t seen the day before. One of the things that we visited was the Plazzo Vecchio museum, which took up our morning, but informed us even more about the history of Florence. After that we got a quick lunch so that we could make the most of our last day in Florence. We explored the town a little bit more, and ended our day at Santa Croche, which was an amazing church in the middle of Florence. On our way back to the hotel, we stopped at a restaurant for dinner, and went through the local market. We stayed up late that evening, and went to bed with the excitement of traveling to Venice the next day.

      3 Tips when in Florence will be my next blog post. Expect that to come out next Monday. If you enjoy this blog, please let me know by liking this blog post, following me on instagram or bloglovin, or leaving a comment. To contact me, my email is alexadventures3@gmail.com. Thank you so much. Talk to you next week!

3 Tips When in Rome

1. Get a tour guide 

• Although you might already know a lot about the place, the tour guides know every last detail about everything. It is their job to know what they are talking about.
• Tour guides in Rome are very nice and will usually teach you things about their culture, and they will also probably teach you common Italian vocabulary which will come in handy later on.

2. Ask Locals

• If you come from America, you will know that most people do not like to be bothered, and so you don’t usually ask people for their advice, but in Rome, the locals love to help.
• Locals are also very happy to have a conversation with anyone.

3. Don’t always trust the internet

• It is ok to use the internet to find popular places, or recommended places in Rome, but the internet is not always right.
• Many times when I was in Rome, the internet was wrong about restaurant popularity and business hours of local shops and restaurants.
• This relates back to asking the locals. For the most part, ask the locals, or if you are staying in a hotel, ask the employees in the lobby.