Jen & Angel in Europe: Venice Day 1- Train to Florence, The most beautiful walk in Venice

We had to catch the train trip to Venice via Eurostar’s rapid train at 10:30am. We woke up early so we could sloooooowwwwwwly get our luggage down the 5 flights of stairs of our apartment. We then had to walk our heavy luggage to the train station, which thankfully, was only a minute walk away.

Since we got to the train station almost 1 ½ hours before our train, Angel and I walked to the Duomo for our favorite ham & cheese quiche pie and to the supermarket for another tub of truffle butter and Nutella.
I’ve met a LOT of people along our tour of Europe that said Venice was the most expensive, most not-worth-it but a once-in-a-lifetime trip, and Venetians are really rude, but so far, we’ve found Venice to be a really amazing trip! Right off the bat, leaving the train station, you can immediately see that Venice is a whole different city. It’s incredibly gorgeous, and the day was sunny and beautiful, so the city just seemed ethereal and like a dream. We took the vaporetto to San Marco square, as our hotel is located off the square.
The vaporetto is pretty big (I thought it would be a dinky little rowboat), with lots of room for luggage in the front:

We asked the water taxi driver how much 4 people would be, with our huge luggage. He said 70 euros to get to San Marco from Santa Lucia train station, and 10 more euros for our collective luggage. Since the vaporetto allows one big luggage per person, and is only 6.50 euros per person, we thought that was a better deal. It did turn out to be a better deal, as we got a 45 minute tour of the Grand Canal going from the train station to San Marco. The view was incredibly beautiful and I am truly amazed at this beautiful city.

The pictures I took most likely do not do the city justice, but I had a huge big dorky grin on my face the whole day because I was so happy to be in this lovely city! It’s really that gorgeous!
It took us half an hour to find the hotel, as every shop and store I went into did not know where our hotel was located! It was frustrating, especially when you’re walking around with 60 pound luggage up and down bridges and steps! I had to finally leave my family standing near San Marco to find the hotel, because it was getting kinda ridiculous… although I must say that Venetians are really nice as a whole, with each store clerk giving me precise instructions of how they thought my next direction should be toward, which, they were usually pretty accurate. It seems that the Venetians only specialize in their own little corner of Venice, so they only know the directions pertaining to their own place. It should also be noted that many Italians work outside Venice and commute in every day from Mestre.

We were really blown away by Murano glass… can you believe this necklace is all glass??? I thought they were individual plastic beads, but no wonder the strands look so fine!

The San Marco square is dominated on one end by the Basilica and the Campanile, of which Berkeley is reputed to have copied:

Across the Canal is the Gallerie Accadamia:

And pops out to say ‘cuckoo’

The gondola (which we saw A LOT of people riding):

It costs around 80 euros for 45 minutes, plus 100 euros extra if you want a singer on board! Some gondolas are too tall to fit underneath the bridges, so we saw one gondola driver press down on the bridge with his hands to push the boat down and forcefully fit his boat underneath:

There’s a really famous teahouse right on San Marco square called Caffe Florian, and we were thinking of going, but dude, a hot chocolate costs 9 euros! I could have gotten hot chocolate at Angelina’s for cheaper!