We arrived late in the evening in Venice, so we went straight to San Giovanni parking place reserved specially for motorhomes. If you come by car, the best is to choose the parking spots outside the city because are much cheaper and you avoid the traffic from the Venice' entrance. The parking is very close to the bridge that connects the mainland with the island and you can pick up a public transport that takes 20 minutes to reach into the city. A 24-hours stay costs 18 euros and you benefit of hot showers and toilets, for the energy you have to pay a fee. Be careful because, although they consider themselves as a parking place, they charge you as a camping, so if you pass even one hour from those 24h, they will charge you for the second day. We weren't so lucky to receive this information, so we've been charged double though we've passed only 1h30....
Map to Venice
Why we left with contradictory feelings about Venice? Because, although, it is a beautiful, colorful and unique city, at the same time is crowded, noisy, with people running among canals to do things, to see things, but in fact they see nothing, because they don't take time to enjoy it for real. This is already the third time when I visit Venice, sure, it's been 10-15 years ago and I loved it, but unfortunately, this time I've found it very changed (yet, I've tried to pictured in photos only the beauty of the city).
Colors of Venice
But, of course, the experience wasn't entirely bad... luckily, the city hides treasures on small streets and little canals. From the Piazzale Roma bus station, we went through the crowded streets until we lost the mass tourists and hid in the Jewish ghetto, then we visited the interesting exhibition of Guatemala Pavilion within Biennale di Venezia held in the gorgeous building of Goethe Institute. As all roads lead to Roma, in Venice, all canals lead to Piazza San Marco, with its magnificent Bassilica, which is tiled with a beautiful Byzantine mosaics, the Campanile bell tower and Palazzo Ducale.
View over Piazza San Marco and the labyrinth of canals
One of the objective was to visit the Biennale di Venezia, so we headed for Giardini della Biennale Arte, located on the opposite corner of the island. It was a pleasant walk until there, but we ended by not attending the exhibition, due to it's spicy entrance fee... I enjoy going to exhibitions and I try to keep updated with art world, but 50 euro for both of us was a bit too much. So we satisfied our curiosity within the international pavilions widespread in the city with free entrance.
Art in Venice
In the evening we gave quite big circles to find an non-touristy restaurant, but seemed a mission impossible, so we gave up and stopped at an old fashioned restaurant with a terrace on a tiny street which seemed promising, but we were wrong because eventually it proved to be like other places we've avoided. To compensate we searched for an authentic gelato italiano on the way back home, but was not our lucky day... so we ended up by eating an ice cream from our freezer stock.
We left Venice and headed straight to South of France to leave the campervan and the cats near the house of Luis's sister, Teresa, while we'll be travelling for a couple of days in Paris.
Photo gallery here:
