JHD Travels: Venice
When we decided to make the move from Houston TX to Berlin Germany a big deciding factor for me was to travel and show AJ the world. We have a long running list of places to visit still, but we started with celebrating AJ’s 2nd birthday in Venice. He’s not old enough to expect a proper party, he’s young enough to keep strapped in his stroller, these were are reasons. I would have made any reason really, I wanted to see Venice.
Flying within Europe is ridiculously inexpensive. We’re taking advantage.
Venice is like a dream. The lighting is incredible. The buildings are incredible.
Venice is also packed with people. With tourists. Packed. So many rolling suitcases. The food isn’t great, at least coming from Berlin. I’M SURE there are pockets of delicious unspoiled by tourists food. But we didn’t find them IN Venice.
I would love to return to Venice alone though. I want to get my design geek on without dragging my guys through it. It’s incredible to imagine all of the life that’s taken place there. It’s also really wild to see the direct effects of Climate Change. Wild and sad and scary.
If you go to Venice you must roam the cities at night. Grab a slice of pizza from a street vendor, and wonder the streets. It has a sort of magic feeling at night.
Essentially, one day in Venice was good for us. Luckily for us we stayed in nearby Marghera. Here we found really incredible pizza and bakeries, delicious gelato, and an amazing grocery store. After our one day in Venice we went to nearby Murano. It’s a charming small Italian island that revolves around the beautiful Italian glass industry.
We spent a lot of time wandering around the behind the scenes neighborhood. The hidden from the tourists areas. When I travel I want to see how people live. The reason Venice turned me off so quickly was how so much of what we saw were catering to the tourists. I really love when a place can remain itself and still allow people to visit and observe. There just isn’t much to learn by visiting a ton of tourist shops or restaurants that have the same food every other place has.
A big storm rolled in while we were in Murano. We had to rush to the boats to get back through at least a foot of ocean water that was washing onto the walkway to the dock. There’s a huge example of how they’re seeing the direct implications of Climate Change. You can read how they’re handling it here.
At the last minute we decided to take a train, the next day, to Treviso. It’s about a 20 minute train ride from the Marghera train station. Easy. Plus they’re known for Prosecco. Done.
In Treviso we had the best pizza of our lives. I know Southern Italy supposedly has the best pizza, and I’ll surely get there eventually, but for now this is the best. Plus Prosecco. Prosecco all day.
Treviso is built around canals like Venice, but it’s completely different from Venice.
Treviso is the type of town I could live in. Cozy and charming, easy to get around in, but still accessible for daily life. We didn’t see many other tourists either so that was a breath of relief. {Tourists are the worst. ;) ;) }
This quote from Julia Child in her My Life in France book sums up my feelings about travel:
“I didn’t like traveling first-class at all. Yes, it was nice to have a bathroom in the hotel and fine service at breakfast, and I’d probably never visit those grand hotels again, but none of it seemed foreign enough to me. It was all so pleasantly bland that it felt as if I were back on the SS America. ”