Italy 2012 – Venice is not Italy

May 7, 2012September 29, 2016 Rich

We are in Venice!

On the recommendations of our tour guide in Cortona, Tripadvisor, and a further affirmation from our Hotel, we made dinner reservations for 8pm at Le Maschere restaurant, which is part of Hotel Splendid. Then we sat down on the terrace for a drink. Watching the canal with a spritz in hand does feel great!

After that we purchased a 36 hour “bus” pass at the Acadamia station nearby and hopped on the bus for Rialto. To clarify, the bus is not really a bus, it’s a boat, but it is called a bus, operates much like a bus, with several different routes like a bus system, and makes many stops like a bus. But it is a boat, and the stops are actually floating docks along the canals. Digital signs at many of the docks tell you when the next bus arrives and the route it is on. Less busy docks just post the routes and timetables.

Venice is very busy with lots of tourists. There seem to be 2-3 cruise ships in port at any given time which adds 10 to 15 thousand people during the daytime to the already big crowds. Since this is the shoulder season, it wasn’t horrible, but we were told later that the summer time has 4 times as many people and you cannot even see the ground as you walk. Thank goodness we are here now rather than in the high season. Venice is also very big, not as a city, but the buildings are more imposing. Especially in the S. Marco area where the Basilica and Palace are huge.

There are tons of street merchants but you will quickly notice that they are all selling exactly the same thing as each other. Worse, they are only feet apart from one another, very strange. Then there are the East Indian men walking around selling little toys in various Piazza’s and Courts, every one of them selling the exact same toy. And finally the African (possibly Nigerian) men selling knock-off purses. Please don’t take this as any sort of racial profiling, it was simply that clear cut in my observation. I don’t really understand why it ended up that way. Buying or selling fake purses is illegal in Italy so be careful. Even the buyer can be fined €1000 by police.

Around 7:30 we made our way to our restaurant which started out somewhat embarrassing. We walked in through the marked door and found a desk with a computer where a woman was sitting. We assumed she was a hostess, and after staring at her for a bit, feeling a bit annoyed at being ignored, she looked up and asked if we were waiting to use the Internet station. After apologizing to her we walked into the restaurant where there was no host/hostess but we were instead seated by a waiter. Le Maschere was okay, but nowhere near worth the money in my opinion due in part to unimaginative food and service issues. Plus they processed our credit card in USD rather than Euro’s without asking, adding a high currency conversion fee of their own that we could have avoided since our VISA card has a low conversion fee. (Nordstrom VISA charges only the minimum 1% that VISA requires, most other banks add an additional 1-3%, check with your bank)

You can read our full review of Le Maschere on Yelp.

After dinner we took the bus back to the stop by our hotel, headed up to our room, and crashed.