Day 61: Interlaken/Venice

I checked out of my hostel at 6:30am, in order to catch my 7:28am train to Venice. Problem was, the woman at the front desk gave me my key deposit back in Swiss francs instead of Euros, even after I was assured I could get it back in Euros the night before. So instead of just keeping the money, I had to find somewhere to spend it before I left Switzerland.

I walked the 30 minutes to the train station (which was much more bearable in the morning) and then found a small shop to waste ten Swiss francs. I ended up buying a National Geographic magazine which looked better than it actually was. Good pictures though.

My first train ride was only thirty minutes and was pretty uneventful except for exchanging glances with a cute Swiss girl. It’s a shame she wasn’t on my train when I arrived or I might have liked Interlaken a bit more…

My second train ride was to Milan and it was packed. If I didn’t make a reservation, I would have been standing up for the two hour ride. When we finally arrived in Milan, I grabbed a slice of diavolo pizza, like pepperoni but spicier, and waited in the hot station for my connecting train.

My final train ride to Venice was absolutely miserable. The air conditioning stopped working and the windows wouldn’t roll down. After another two hours, I arrived in Venice Mestre – the train station on the mainland. I didn’t want to stay on the island of Venice for a number of reasons. First was because all the hostels got poor reviews saying, ‘Bring mosquito repellent’ and ‘experienced bed bugs and walked for an hour to go to a piazza’, and second was because it would be a bit cheaper to stay on the mainland.

I ended up deciding to stay at Hotel Martello, which ended up being a fifteen minute walk from the train station. I walked in and was greeting by a friendly Italian woman, who runs the hotel and lives upstairs. She marked up a map of Venice for me and told me how to use the buses and trains to get to the island. After cooling down in my air-conditioned hotel room for 45 minutes (which felt incredible), I decided to take the train to the mainland.

The trip lasted about 20 minutes, and ended at the Saint Lucia train station. I spent the rest of the day getting lost in Venice and taking pictures.

There was a large concert happening in St. Mark’s square so it was covered in chairs:

One of the many water taxis:

This figures were on the outside of a building, marking each apartment for the intercom system.

These kids were playing soccer in one of Venice’s many squares:

Oh, and Venice is ridiculously hot. So hot, that you can’t walk around without sweating through your shirt. When I left to go back to the mainland at 11:00pm, it was still 85 degrees outside. It’s so hot that I think I’ll stay in my hotel room for most of the day tomorrow, and go out once the sun gets lower in the sky. Venice is amazing, and I really enjoy it, but I would like it much more if I was here in April or May. I’m sure I’ll return at some point, and when I do, it’s not going to be in June, July, or August.