Before I moved to Venice people had told me to bring wellies because of how flooded the city can get, but of course I always brushed this off thinking 'oh yeah I'll just avoid the puddles' because of course I had no room to spare in my suitcase for the big move. Well I think it is safe to say I definitely underestimated the sheer scale of water that engulfs this city!
One thing I have learnt so far here is that we should all worship the Flixbus and the Megabus. I know we have National Express in England and it is the same thing expect it is ridiculously cheap here. We spontaneously decided to take a day trip to Bologna just because it was one euro each way from Venice with Flixbus. One hundred and eighty miles worth of travel for the price of a gelato! Also we found out it is where the sauce in spaghetti Bolognese originates from, which meant dinner was sorted before we left!
When we were back at the train station from the speedy visit to Lake Garda, we walked into Verona city centre - which was only about five minutes around the corner. When you get there you walk into a huge square which is surrounded with restaurants and the Arena Di Verona. In the centre is a small park where you can rent bikes to go around the city on, but there was some big up front cost so we stuck to walking.
Ok so Venice is amazing but after about a month in we decided to venture out and start seeing the amazing country we are living in instead of just the city! We planned to take one big day trip to Verona but when we got there a spontaneous decision was made to take a detour to Lake Garda as it really is not that far from Verona and why not kill two birds with one stone?! To get to Verona we booked the Flixbus from the Tronchetto station in Venice and it only cost about 5/6 euros each way, how good is that? That is like 4 pound, you definitely would not get that in England! Then the coach dropped us at Verona train station so we got the train to Lake Garda from there. This was only 5 euros each way and was only about a 20 minute journey. Then it is literally just a walk down a hill and you are on the lake.
When we first moved here the Venice Film Festival was ongoing but we had no idea where it was. Eventually we found out it was on one of the other islands called Lido which is a 11 kilometre strip of land which is basically all sand. So as soon as we found this out what did us Brits who hardly ever see sunshine think? Beach days of course! So after that it became a weekly thing for the first few weeks to spend time there soaking up the sun haha. It was so strange at first because Lido has, wait for it... Roads and cars! and after being surrounded by just water and boats it was a big deal. The picture above is one I took of the sunset one evening there. We sat on the docks for ages trying to get the perfect picture of it as it really was something.
Venice is a city which is well known all around the world and is definitely a tourist hotspot and after living here for two months now I can 100 per cent confirm that it is a island brimming full of all sorts of nationalities. But it's no surprise as it is such a unique place to visit as it's full of culture as well as people! For non residents there are four main points of interest which form their own Venetian triangle! San Marco's Square, Accademia, Rialto and the Grand Canal which runs between them all.
