Trip - Venice-Florence-Pisa-Naples

The 3rd day was the longest, most eventful, least relaxing, and probably most exciting. I left the hotel around sunrise and explored a very empty Venice. WOW! I've been to a lot of places and I've never seen anything like Venice. Well, I take that back -- I've been to the Venetian hotel in Las Vegas and was amazed by it, but that wasn't nearly as spectacular as the real thing.

The city doesn't have any roads. It's all canals and walkways. It has a very consistent look -- the buildings all seem to be from the same era (quite), and many of them look the same. But they were very clean and well-kept. And I liked the architecture a lot.

Because there are no roads, Venice has some unique things that no other city (to my knowledge has). It has buses, garbage "trucks", and abulances, but they are all boats! I rode one of the water busses and it was very nice. I think Venice is one of those places where everyone should visit at some point. And get up early. By 9 or 10, the city became very crowded and lost some of its charm.

There is one negative side to Venice -- it's nearly impossible to find your way around. A map of the city would literally look like a maze. Sometimes long walkways lead to dead ends. Sometimes you can cross the canals and sometimes you cant. Sometimes you can walk along the main canal and sometimes you cant. I looked closely at a map, took a waterbus "to the train station", walked around for an hour trying to find the station, and eventually ended up right back where I started. I've heard that a compass is recommended, and I agree. It's usually hard to see where the sun is because the walkways/canals are so narrow and the buildings on each side block the sun.

I eventually made it to the train station, and from there headed down to Bologna, Florence, and Pisa. Florence and Pisa, both in Tuscany, were reasonably nice cities - much better than Genoa, but not as nice as Venice. The countryside from Florence to Pisa was quite nice. After my experience near Genoa, I didn't want to touch the train from Pisa to Naples (would've taken forever to get there!) so I went back to Florence to catch a faster train after first exploring Florence for about an hour. I think Florence is the second-nicest city in Italy, after Venice.

I went straight to Naples - passed through Rome but didn't get off the train.

posted by Matt @ 8:58 PM