Venice and Pisa

Approaching San Marco

It seemed to be season for an Italian holiday for everyone as we entered the month of June. In successive weekends, two of our group of friends had already been there and many more groups were lined up for a grand ‘Roman Holiday’.
My parents were here so there was no better place to head off to than Italy, a place which I was yet to see. The history of the place, its paintings, architecture makes you all the more eager to visit the country about which you have read and heard so much.
We planned for a four-day trip, flying in from Prague to Venice and flying out of Rome, with a trip to Pisa in between. Ideally Florence also should have fitted in the plan but due to time constraints it could not be possible.

Rialto Bridge

Day 1: Venice
Venice was always a fascination since childhood. I used to wonder what would a city full of canals be? A city where you don’t drive a car but a motor-boat to go from one place to another. Often when there used to be water-logged streets in our hometown in Calcutta, we used to visualize a Venice in it. And now it would be the opportunity to visit this unique city. The feedback about Venice was not that encouraging. Many tourists there had given the feedback that it’s not as exciting as it seems since the canal is extremely dirty and often stinks. All that feel of a romantic canal ride on a Gondola gets buried in the stink of the canal.
We flew into Venice Marco Polo airport on Thursday the 9th June. It was a full-fledged international airport and I could see aircrafts of many international airlines parked in the tarmac. As advised by our friends who had been here earlier, we checked in at the airport information desk. We bought the all-day pass for EUR 18 which would cover all bus and boat rides across the city. We would have to take a bus to Piazza Roma and then a waterbus through the canals to Rialto where we need to get off to go to our hotel. The concept of a ‘water’bus sounded fascinating and I was already looking forward to it. The waterbus ride to Rialto gave a first look at the city through the canals and all the negative reviews that I had received earlier vanished from my mind. The place was extremely lively on both sides of the canal and the canal was also buzzing with boats of all types. And the stink, I could smell none. More than a romantic place, it looked to be place to chill out and relax in your t-shirts and shorts (like the feel you get in beachside places).
We got down at Rialto, which looked to be one of the landmark places symbolized by the iconic Rialto Bridge which provides one of the links between both sides of the canal. We took some time to locate our hotel St. Leo Tourist house and in no time we were out on the banks of the canal under the Rialto Bridge. The lunch was familiar – Pizza Margarita in the land of Pizzas. And little did I know that for the next 3 days it would be only Pizza and Pasta for food as those seemed to be the only thing available. We hung around in Rialto for a while on both sides of the bridge after which we took the Gondola ride. A Gondola ride through the lanes of Venice for half-n-hour for four of us would cost us EUR 80 and we gladly accepted the deal as it would not be possible to get a better one. A Gondola ride for all Indian movie- goers would remind us of the Amitabh Bachchan-Zeenat Aman song Do labzon ki hai from the film The Great Gambler. Just like Keukenhoff tulip gardens in associated with the song Dekha ek khwab, Venice is associated with Do labzon ki hai for a large number of Indians. The Gondola took us through the lanes and by-lanes of Venice showing us old buildings and often giving the look of a water-logged street in India. The bridges in between, however, would remind us that we are actually in Venice. After the Gondola ride we decided to make full use of our 18 EUR pass and go out to different spots of the city by the waterbus. We cruised down to the biggest square in Venice, the San Marco.

View from San Marco

This was a huge square buzzing with tourists and shops. We were welcomed by pigeons who were constantly clicked in different poses by various cameras. The place was huge and you could spend hours going through the shops in the various lanes. We spent a couple of hours and then decided to move on the farthest point that the waterbus could take us i.e. Lido. Lido was another island across the sea where there was a beach and there was also road transport available. We set off on the waterbus and the canal had now given way to the beautiful blue sea. It was cloudy and there were few drops of rain making the weather pleasant and also presenting us with a beautiful rainbow. By the time we reached Lido, we were a touch tired and hungry so we sat down at a café there and munched some sandwiches and ice-cream. We were now in a mood to laze around and by the time we decided to head back it was already past 8. On the way there was another beautiful place Salute which we could not visit. It was quite late and the place had become empty.
From the boat we could view some posh buildings. We returned back to Rialto, walked around and settled for dinner on the banks under the Rialto Bridge. The dinner was, as mentioned earlier, sphagetti and pasta and after sitting aimlessly on the canal bank for a while and talking to some tourists we called it a day. The next morning at 9:30 we would be on a train to Florence.
Day 2: Pisa
Two waterbus stops from Rialto and we were in the Venice railway station where we would board a train to Florence. I felt a touch disappointed to leave Venice that soon but unfortunately there was no later train to Florence and we did not want to compromise on the two days in Rome. We bid good-bye to Venice with a desire to be back some day. Thankfully, we had booked all our tickets online at www.trenitalia.com so we did not have to waste time in ticket queues. The journey to Florence took close to a couple of hours. We stayed put in the station as we had to take the train to Pisa and had another pizza lunch. We kept some of our luggage in the cloak room and carried the rest with us as we moved to Pisa to see one of the Seven Wonders of the World, the leaning tower. We bought the tickets to Pisa for 5 EUR from Florence station and after an hour’s journey to Pisa and a short local bus journey we were at the foot of the magnificent leaning tower of Pisa.

The tilt or the lean is hard to believe in front of your own eyes and it’s an altogether different experience to seeing it in photographs. The entire place was extremely well maintained. Besides the tower, the enclosed place (which was more like a park) had two other structures – a church and a cathedral both beautiful pieces of architecture and serving as the perfect foil to THE main attraction of the place. All the structures were sparkling white in colour (and would have well suited for a washing powder advertisement). The place had tourists, all doing the same thing i.e. clicking and posing for snaps. The most funny poses being an apparent push to the tower to tilt it.

Photo: Sandip Ghosh

A two-dimensional photo will surely make it look real i.e. the push to tilt the tower. I wonder how many people have over the years have apparently ‘pushed’ the tower. Once our rounds of snaps were done and a small visit to the ‘inside’ of one the churches, we were all set to make the journey back to Florence. The visit to the inside of the church was highly disappointing and not worth the Euros we paid but my father insisted that we should visit at least one of the structures at such a historic place. There were quite a few tourists who climbed to the top of the tower but we were too lazy to climb that many steps up. We made our one hour journey back to Florence. The train to Rome was from another station in Florence. That caused a bit of a pain as we had to make one more ‘short’ journey. We collected our luggage from the cloak room, took the train ride and reached our destination station from where we would board the train to Rome. We boarded the train that was coming from Milan and would take us to Rome in a couple of hours. The evening train journey was quite interesting and we even spent some time in the dining car. We reached Rome Termini at around ten and now were faced with the big ask of eating and then going to our hotel in Marconi station. Rome Termini was a huge station and it even had walkways like we have in airports. We packed pizzas and McDonald’s burgers, bought metro tickets and took the blue metro line towards Marconi station. Our hotel St. Paul was a good twenty minute walk from the metro station. This proved to be quite a difficult task with the luggage. We were getting quite anxious as it was dark and the walk towards the landmark seemed to take an eternity. But once we were inside the hotel and checked in, it felt extremely relaxing. It was a top class three-star hotel and was the best place to just drop your body and get re-charged for a hectic next day in the historic city of Rome.
Rome: Continued in Part II