Written by guest blogger Tiarra.
Kelli and I decided that we wanted to check out Venice, so Monday morning we boarded the local train for Milan. The local train is very crowded, hot, humid and smelled of pee. Our trip would take nearly four hours to get to Venice- one hour and 20 minutes on the intercity train to Milan, and then 2 1/2 hours on the EuroStar train to Venice. We bought our tickets online, but there are no printers here, so we took Gene's advice and "just got on the train". Long story short, don't "just get on the train" with no tickets. It's a good thing I don't speak Italian, because I don't even want to know what was being said about us. Kelli was getting "car sick" on the pee train and was getting worried about the trip from Milan to Venice, but the EuroStar train was much nicer. We sat in first class, it had air conditioning, and the bonus was that it did not smell of pee.
We got to Venice, and found the public ferry to our hotel without any problems. We had a very nice hotel a couple of blocks from St. Mark's Square. The first thing we did was walk to St. Mark's Basilica to tour the cathedral. We waited in this huge line with people and pigeons. The line moved fairly quickly. We were about to enter and an old woman who was selling shawls to cover any exposed shoulders for 1 euro that looked like scraps of material to me, said we could not go in because our shorts were too short. Excuse me? Now I'm not one for religious rituals anyway, but you can't go pray if your shoulders or knees are exposed? Wow. Kelli decided that we should sneak in anyway because we saw other people whom the woman did not stop that were in with illegally exposed body parts too. We walked through the cathedral without any problems and did not have to spend the night in church prison.
Our hotel offered a "complimentary" boat ride out to Murano Island to "tour" a Venetian glass factory. So the next day our private boat arrived and took us out to Murano. It was quite a nice little boat ride. Kelli and I were the only ones on the boat. We were greeted at the factory with our own personal guide as well. Stefano. Stefano had very bad coffee and cigarette breath. He showed us a little demo they had set up when we entered what we now know was a gallery. They had the glass blowers make a small vase for us and then proceeded to take us to room after room of very expensive pieces of glass sculptures, dishes and vases. When we said we were ready to go without buying anything at the "very special factory direct price", we were told that we could take the public taxi back to Venice. What a nice little scam that was. Where was the factory? For all I know that glass is made in China. The people at the hotel must be in on it too, because when we finally made our way back, there was definitely a different level of service. But even despite that, we had a very nice time in Venice. It is certainly a different way of life. It was extremely crowded and expensive. We found that if we walked to parts where the locals shopped it was much more pleasant and was not as expensive. The people are very friendly and you can usually get what you need by pointing.
