Venice, Day 2: Streets of Venice

On our way to Correr Museum in the morning, we saw a lot of interesting shops. This one is a print shop. Venice used to have a very vibrant printing industry.

Venice is very unique. There is no city like Venice. 

Venetian mask, although expensive, is a work of art. The real Venetian mask is handmade. 

In the morning, there are small vendors selling food on the street to the locals.

Gondolas are nicely decorated. They are all in black. The uniformity is the regulation from hundred years ago to prevent people from showing off their wealth. Now it is the tradition to keep the iconic and signature look.

Behind St. Mark’s Square, the streets are full of boutiques.

Venice looks magical, but the tourism side of Venice is not. It is too crowded, and food is bad and expensive for what you get. If you just travel from Florence to Venice, you feel like you are in food hell. Dining in Venice proves to be an unsatisfying experience. I don’t even think you can get great food in Venice because everything is designed for tourists and the shop staffers know most tourists are unlikely to come back to Venice. 

They say most Venetians moved out of Venice because it is too expensive to live here. The tourism industry jacks up the price of everything. That is sad.

The other thing about Venice is the hotel room is not very comfortable because these old buildings are not very functional for modern life. In Italy, they have a regulation that hotels can not provide winter heating before mid October. In other words, they don’t turn on heater before mid October and that’s the law. Venice is on water, therefore late September or early October is already cold at night. Since the buildings are all ancient, these old buildings have no insulation what so ever. Inside is as cold as outside. It’s ridiculous. You also have to be careful not to let mosquitos get in your room. We already closed all the windows. Somehow, they still got in the room and tortured us all night long. On a bright note, the bump a Venetian mosquito leaves you is quite small. 

Before the trip, I already heard about the mosquito problem. I brought mosquito patches to Venice like a dork. The patches were useless and left some glue on my face. I had a hard time to get the glue off. I kept having a feeling that I was camping, although I was staying in a hotel. 

I feel that if I ever come back to Venice, I should try to find a hotel that was renovated during recent years. It is probably more modern with duel pan windows, which would keep your room warm if you come here in September and early October. People always say you should stay in Venice main island so you can have the experience of waking up on the main island. I don’t find it necessarily a good idea. Why? If your hotel is not on Grand Cannel and does’t have a view, you wake up seeing walls. If the hotel is two blocks away from Grand Cannel, you can still walk outside to see the beautiful sunrise in Venice in the morning. That is still doable. But if your hotel is not close to Grand Cannel, there is no point. It doesn’t really matter you are on Venice main island or not, you still have to walk through the maze to reach Grand Cannel in the morning. You are likely to get lost in the maze and miss the sunrise, that’s not very relaxing, is it? After dark, at 7pm, most shops are closed and many tourists are gone. Venice main island gets very quiet. There are not that many activities going on except some restaurants are still open. It is all right to stay in a newer hotel on nearby island and taking ferries to Venice main island in the morning. Just make sure your hotel is near a ferry stop for convenient commute. Anyway, I really don’t see the benefit of living on the main island if the hotel room has no water view and is not even close to Grand Cannel.  Does that make sense?