The middle destination on my Great Northern Italy Adventure™, was Venezia, or Venice as we English-speaking like to call it. Venice is one of Italy’s most picturesque travel destinations, as well as one of its most popular. It’s situated only a thin strip of land away from the Adriatic Sea, the northernmost arm of the Mediterranean Sea that separates the Italian peninsula from the Balkan peninsula. It is full of narrow, winding corridors of stone and canals out the wazoo.
On Friday, December 28th, 2012, my best friends and I got dropped off at the train station in Cadorago, after staying with Paolo’s friend Simone for the night of our day in Milan. We took the train back down to Milan, where we would switch at Milano Centrale, the central train station of Milan, and catch a 2 and 1/4 hour train to Venice. Joseph, who is one of my best friends from New York City and accompanied me to Italy, and I by now had grown accustomed to the constant train rides back and forth over northern Italy as our two local best friends, Paolo and Alessandra, took us all over. We tried to do what we couldn’t seem to make time for outside of the trains: sleep.
Just like Venice was the middle destination on our trip, it would also deliver Joseph and I our middle reunion of the trip. Paolo and Allie were the two we came to Italy to see, but we have so many wonderful friends in and around the area, that it was hard to not try to see as many as we could. So Sara, a friend who we met several months back as she was visiting New York, decided she would meet up with us in Venice, since she lived nearby in Padua.
After crossing the Ponte della Libertà, we arrived at the train’s final stop, the Stazione di Venezia Santa Lucia, or the St. Lucia station. Exiting the station, we were in the outskirts of the city, what is known as Cannaregio. We stopped for a quick snack and espresso, then bought tickets to a passenger ferry that would ring us around the islands to get to where we wanted to officially start our tour, Piazza San Marco (St. Mark’s Square). The short winter days had sunset fast approaching, so the view became quite beautiful on the 20+ minute ride to the other side.
