After a short two and a half hour flight, Charlie and I arrived in Venice; the first of 10 cities we will be passing in our Eastern European adventure. Unfortunately, we only had 23 hours to explore and make the most of Venice so Charlie and I had no option but to hit the ground running. We went straight from the plane to a bus to exploring the winding streets of Venice.

We didn’t arrive to Venice with a particular list of things to do so we just tried to absorb as much of the culture and architecture as we possibly could until we got hungry. And then the hunt for a decent restaurant began. I have always been terrible with restaurants and I find it really hard to know what I’m looking for. We were advised to stay away from any restaurants on the main canal as they are notorious for being over priced. Deeper and deeper into the heart of Venice we wandered, winding through all those tiny streets and over those baby canal bridges until we stumbled across what looked like an authentic Italian restaurant called Trattoria al Ponte. It turned out to be quite a lucky find. I had been psyching myself up for a massive bowl of spaghetti bolognaise and that’s exactly what I ordered (I mean let’s be real, did you really go to Italy if you don’t have a bowl of pasta?) whereas Charlie opted for the lasagne.

After dinner we continued our walking tour of Venice until the light started to fade and we decided it was time to head to our hostel. As soon as I found this hostel online I wanted to book it, it’s an expanding chain called ‘The Generator’. When I went to Berlin back in April, our tutor had booked four nights there and it was incredible. With a bar and lounge downstairs, the rooms are all large with ensuites and plenty of lockable storage for your rucksack and valuables. Ideal. It was also one of the cheapest hostels I could find as obviously Venice is a big tourist destination, more so considering it’s rapidly approaching peak season. As a consequence of the decent price, the hostel was located quite far away from the main city centre and we had to get a ferry to and from there. However, considering gondola prices are now a whopping 100 euros for a 35 minute ride and we didn’t dare look at how much a water taxi would cost, the ferry seemed to be a reasonable alternative minus the glamour. There was one huge bonus for staying in a hostel away from the city centre, and that was seeing the sun set over the beautiful city.

The next day brought more walking. We had agreed to catch the 13.15 train to Trieste so we had the whole morning to explore. The evening before didn’t quite take us to St. Marco’s Piazza and that’s an absolute must when in Venice. We walked around the square a couple of times before continuing our walk to find a coffee for Charlie and gelato for me.

We walked past Florians, Venice’s first EVER cafe.

Basilica di Marco…

I was a bit sad that we didn’t actually inside Basilica di San Marco but Charlie’s not a huge fan of giant queues and we’re both not big on mass amounts of tourists crammed into one place (no, Charlie and I are not tourists, we’re travellers. And that’s different. Sort of…) However, it was lovely to just take all of it in and to just to be in Venice, I don’t think you really need to have a list of things to do, just being there is enough. Before we headed off to the train station, we grabbed lunch at a nearby pizzeria, probably the most appropriate way to end our short visit to Venice.