Today was a super early start and I got up around 4 AM. I had looked at the tram schedule the night before, and gave myself a solid fifty minutes to leave the house this morning. I hadn’t finished packing completely and wanted some extra time.
Fifty minutes later, I had packed my bag, eaten, and was heading out the door. I was about to get to the tram stop when I got a text alert from FlixBus. Our bus was delayed fifty minutes. Rats!
Rather than wait an extra hour in the cold at the bus station, I turned around headed back home. I would just lie in bed for about an hour until it was time to go back to the bus station. I had only gotten three and a half hours of sleep yesterday, so I was exhausted. I resisted the urge to sleep while waiting for the bus because I knew it would be hard to get up again. I just laid down for fifty minutes and listened to a podcast.
Eventually it was time to head out for the second time. I arrived at the bus station in a timely manner and found Nick and Harry. We waited in the lobby for a bit and eventually boarded the bus. I put on my sleep mask, neck pillow and ear plugs and quickly conked out.
I woke up about three hours later and we were now in Italy. We still had about five to six hours left in the bus ride to Venice. I spent about an hour and a half studying some Italian vocab and conjugations. I also ate some banana and Nutella sandwiches in between.
I then watched Spider-Man: Homecoming on my laptop. This is the latest one to come out and I’ve been on a Marvel kick after seeing Black Panther. I enjoyed the movie a lot and it was a great way to kill two hours.
Here’s a selfie of Harry and I sporting our neck pillows. Nick is inferior and doesn’t have one.
We killed time for another hour and finally arrived in Venice! We got off the bus and started our trek into the main city. We had to take a small train that was comically named the “people mover”.
We arrived in Piazzale a Roma and all the canals were suddenly in view. There was a ticket office for the public transportation, so we all bought three-day passes. All the public transportation was on boats on the canals. It was organized like any other subway map though.
We were staying in an area called Lido which was slightly outside of Venice. We hopped on the right boat and headed to Lido. The ride there was awesome and offered some great views of the city.
Here’s some pictures
We soon arrived in Lido where our Airbnb host was waiting for us. We introduced ourselves and she walked us to the apartment. She pointed out various restaurants and shops to us that she recommended. Lido is awesome and is like a small, quiet beach town. Downtown Venice can be super crowded and touristy, so we were glad to have a quiet area. The beach to the Adriatic Sea was a short five minutes from where we were staying. If any of my readers have seen the Black Mirror episode “San Junipero”, Lido reminded me a lot of it.
A canal in Lido near our apartment
The host helped us settle in. The apartment was a little small, but nice. My only complaint is that people clearly have smoked cigarettes in the apartment before and there was a slight smell.
After we unpacked, all three of us headed out to explore Lido. Our first destination was the beach. It was a short walk from our apartment and we found it quickly. It was really windy, but the beach was awesome and beautiful. I can’t imagine what it’s like in the summer.
The beach
Once we wrapped up on the beach, we explored the area a bit more. Lido is a very skinny and 11 km long. We were getting hungry and went to check out a restaurant the airbnb women had recommended. As a lover of Italian food, it was safe to say I was super excited for our meal.
Different courses known as piatti are a big part of Italian dinners. We all wanted to have a “primo and secondo piatto”. I only spoke to the waiters in Italian and was felling good about my skills.
For my first course, I got gnocchi in a meat sauce. My second course was veal in a white wine sauce. Both were amazing.
The Gnocchi
The Veal
After dinner it was only right that we got gelato. We were in Italy after all. I went for the stracciatella.
Delicious as expected
After eating our gelato, we headed to a supermarket to pick up supplies for breakfast. We got two dozen eggs and a bunch of sausages for breakfast. With our groceries in hand, we headed back home.
I took a shower when we got home and was surprised to find out that the hot water heater was terrible. After about two minutes, the hot water ran out and I had to take a cold shower. It was not fun. I’ll probably contact the Airbnb lady tomorrow because I do not want to take another cold shower.
Earlier that day, we were talking about the movie Inception and how Nick had never seen it. Because of that, we decided to watch Inception tonight. We wanted to have an early start tomorrow and ended up only watching the movie.
I’m excited for what Venice will bring tomorrow.
Foreign Tourist with No Grasp of the Local Language 
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