An Unforgettable Venice Trip

I have always dreamed about riding in a gondola and Venice has been on my bucket list for quite some time. So we finally used a free weekend to take a trip to Venice. We took a bus there through a tour group called Florence for Fun, which we basically do every trip through. We had intentions of not doing Venice through a group but train tickets were about the same price as going with the tour which included a water taxi ride and tour guide. The trip started out with a three hour bus ride from Florence to Venice. From the bus we took a quick train ride and hopped right on a private water taxi tour. Right off the bat we knew this trip was going to be different, and not just because we were going to a city whose streets are filled with water, but because of the new tour guide Florence for Fun had acquired for the trip...

Meet Frank...or so we think his name is Frank it may have been Francesco......

Before I tell you about Frank let me give you some background on Florence for Fun. Florence for Fun is a tour group pretty much run by interns that have just graduated college. All of their trips are pretty laid back and the activities they plan for the trip always include free time and are up to your desecration whether or not you'd like to participate. 

Frank had a different way of running things that included keeping everything to a precise schedule and keeping the entire group (which included a full bus load of people) completely together. Frank even allocated time for what he called "pee pee breaks." That kept me laughing all day! The way he said pee-pee breaks was hilarious! Now Frank is a very smart man, he's italian and has been teaching for years! But anyways now that you've met Frank let us continue.... 

It was 13 people to a water taxi so we had to wait for everyone to get off. During this time people took "pee pee breaks" which Frank was not happy about since he had not called for a PEE PEE BREAK! When everyone had finally gotten off and together all 40 of us headed over to Piazza San Marco. It wasn't a far walk, but the streets of Venice are very small and confusing, then add another 5 billion tourist in and it's not the easiest thing in the world to stay completely together. The walk took about 8 minutes tops and by the time we had gotten to the point in the Piazza that Frank wanted to point out we had lost a good 15 people from the group. This got Frank furious because "he was a very impatient man" as he stated. So we waited and waited and people called and called trying to find the others. This took a while. Finally everyone was back together and Frank herded us all to see a glass blowing demonstration. This time Frank was sure to keep full tabs on the group!

The glass blowing demonstration was amazing! We watched a glass blowing professional make a vase and a stallion in minutes. The way he quickly maneuvered the glass into the shapes he wanted was unreal. This is him making the Stallion....

The glass demonstration went so quickly! It was about a 10 minute long presentation and then we were hustled into the glass blowing gift shop where a man showed us all the different glass pieces you could buy and offered special student prices...instead of a $350 glass vase you could get it for the special price of $250...I don't think they understood that the majority of the people on the tour are college student and therefore don't have the money to drop $250 on a vase. After that the tour was done and we were sent off for a quick free time to get lunch. 

Like I had said the streets of Venice are very confusing and we didn't want to get lost and get Frank mad again so we tried to get lunch in a relatively familiar area close to the next meeting spot. We walked down a street full of restaurants searching for a reasonably priced meal in a tourist area..sounds like an oxymoron! We settled on a place that said "No cover charge" and that had soup because we were all pretty cold. On a side note of course I had dressed completely inappropriately for Venice and had worn a tank top maxi dress, jean jacket, scarf, and ohh yeah sandals....on an overcast, 60 degree day in Venice you can imagine that I was freezing all day. We sat down to eat and right off the bat the servers were pretty rude and seemed annoyed to be even taking our order, but we stayed anyways! As Paige (one of the girls we came with) would describe it our meal was like "a Lean Cuisine", a very expensive Lean Cuisine that is! It was an extremely mediocre meal in which we ended up paying a pretty penny for because not only did they con us into a cover charge but we also had to pay a service fee. Apparently there was no cover charge if you ordered a select set of dishes off the menu...are you kidding. To put this in perspective I got a soup and split garlic bread with Taylor and ended up paying 15.50 Euros for my meal. ATTENTION EVERYONE: if you're ever in a touristy area run away!! Look for restaurants that are off the main streets and always ask about cover charges! Lesson learned we got pretty ripped off. On that sour note we were all a little mad but quickly sucked it up and moved on. 

We walked around for a little and then went back to the meeting point. Everyone was a bit more punctual this time and Frank was able to keep his cool together. We were then given a walking tour of the city by Frank himself. During this entire tour we were allowed no pee-pee breaks! He took us to a few spots and would stop and explain the history and we would continue. With a large group it was often hard to hear Frank because he had a low voice. During the tour we stopped and we all got the opportunity to pay 15 Euros to take a gondola ride. The boats were supposed to be groups of 5 but we snuck our 6 on one boat which made a lot of the other people on the trip mad..oh well! The gondola ride was well worth it! It was like a scene from a movie! A man in a striped blue and white shirt took us through the streets of Venice, although he didn't sing, the ride was magical! We got to experience a gondola traffic jam and ask a bunch of questions about living in Venice...they take a school boat!! Another weird detail about our gondola journey was when we passed under a bridge an Asian tour group started taking pictures of us in the gondola and some were saying beautiful ladies...so its not just the Italians who do that! Also really creepy that they were taking pictures of strangers....When the ride was over we were all in good spirits again! 

We continued on with Frank's tour stopping no where. At one point Frank said "I hate shopping and I hate tourist so I will take you this way." YOURE WITH A GROUP OF TOURISTS!! YOURE A TOUR LEADER!! Anyways this lead us to Frank taking us down a bunch of empty alleys but he did have some cool things to say about different stops! We stopped at a place where a Venetian man lived with a women he had married from Pisa. The women from Pisa missed home so he build this to remind her of home...

Place like this that he took us to were really cool because there is no way we would've found this on our own. We finally stopped and were given about 20 minutes of free time. In this time my friends all wanted to try tiramisu because Venice is known for its tiramisu. So we searched around for a place to get some. While they got that I got one of the Italian hot chocolates that are really like warm puddings...so good!!...because I hate coffee and tiramisu tastes like coffee. As soon as we were done eating is was time to go back to the meeting point and already time to go back to the bus! This was the only problem with the way the Venice tour was run, we really got no time to do an bits of our own exploring. 

We headed back to the train station to get to the bus. Our walk to the train station was pretty nice because by now it was dark in Venice which I thought made it look even beautifuler! Venice truly is one of the most beautiful places I have ever been. Especially since it is such a unique city! When we got back on the bus we were told that 20 minutes into the ride we would stop for a final "pee pee break!" and for some dinner. We stayed at the rest stop for 40 minutes and believe it or not the rest stop had some awesome pizza! We got back on the bus and waited and we waited...and we waited, finally Frank came on the microphone and said that there was an electrical problem with the bus and he had to call and try and get a new one. After about 40 minutes Frank told us another bus would be arriving shortly so we all got off the bus. Our friend Paige who had been sleeping got off the bus in a daze and didn't realize there was a huge step up onto the sidewalk so she feel over it and into Frank! It was the funnest thing i've witnessed! Frank was in shock and was like what are you trying to do kill me! From then on the night was hilarious as the "bus will be here shortly" statement turned into another 40 minutes of waiting. When the bus finally arrived we were ready to finally start getting home! They played the movie Love Actually on the bus which was a pretty good movie! As we neared home Frank said "we're only 15 minutes away!" We were actually about 30 minutes away but thank god we were because Frank decided to start playing his music over the microphone. He started by saying I would like to play you a great Venice love song and put on "Por Ti Volare," for anyone that doesn't know this is the song that Will Farrell sings at the end of Step Brothers. We lost it! It was so funny!!! The whole bus had been like sleeping and was quite and Frank goes on and starts playing this song! My friends and I then encouraged him to put on more music and he proceeded to put on a dance remix to "Take A Chance On Me", that was even funnier as me and my friends all sang along, I think the whole bus wanted to kill us. Then Franks phone died so he kept saying "hold on I need to recharge." He put on one last song before the ride ended which was an Italian rock song. Frank ended the trip on such a high note with those songs. In the end although we had no free time, got extremely ripped off at lunch, having the bus break down and were freezing all day, nothing could top the memories of Frank on that trip or how beautiful Venice is. If I learned anything from this trip and being abroad in general it is to never sweat the small stuff, all the bumps in the road make for some of the greatest memories! Our Venice trip will forever be truly unforgettable! 

Here are some pictures from the day.... 

My favorite picture from the day...