Meg, Max and Backpacks

  Final Days in Venice To start off our final day in Venice, we caught a vaporetto down to Rialto Bridge and walked out into one of the city's shopping hubs. We were surrounded by designer shops and high street brands, but for now, we were interested in a building with more than just window displays. The Acqua Alta bookshop is the most famous in Venice, and if their slogan is anything to go by, the most beautiful bookshop in the world.  We arrived early enough that the shop floor, which is usually crawling with tourists, was very quiet. This place was literally overflowing with books: vintage and second-hand volumes spilled from shelves and postcards were stacked haphazardly. Posters and cards flowed out into the courtyard, where beautiful old prints vied for the attention of passersby. Inside the shop, old gondolas had been repurposed as storage boxes and were chock-a-block with even more dog-eared volumes. Walking around the shop was like perusing a museum, with English and ...

Murano and Burano The unlimited use of vaporettos available with our tickets meant that we couldn't resist the chance to visit Venice's neighboring islands, Murano and Burano. To reach the former, we needed to take a 25-minute vaporetto ride. This took us out of the central canals and into the open water, which felt like a proper Mediterranean lagoon with a warm breeze and azure waves. We also had a great view of Venice's shoreline and some of the neighboring islands like the spooky Isola di San Michele - this island is the graveyard of Venice, and its somber mood was strangely tangible.  Isola di San Michele When we docked at Murano, we realised that we were among the first tourists of the day, so we had the island largely to ourselves. This city is famous for its glass production, and every shop along the canals seemed to be selling coloured glass sculptures. The craftsmanship was truly incredible, with the local glassblowers creating everything imaginable, ranging from m...

 Venice Day 1 in Venice Traveling from our accommodation on the mainland to the island of Venice was going to require us to use lots of buses, so we decided to fork out for a 3-day Venice transport pass: this gave us 72 hours of unlimited access to all buses and water buses (vaporettos) in the city. At a fairly hefty 28 euros apiece, we initially wondered if they were worth the money, but since every ride on a vaporetto is 8 euros, we thought they would pay off fairly quickly. Buying the passes online did create one small problem since we spent the first half an hour of our morning pacing back and forth through the train station trying to find the machine which would print our tickets (electronic vouchers have to be converted into physical cards), but once we had retrieved the tickets we jumped on the next bus into Venice and validated them. The Square Views from the Vaporetto We immediately got to benefit from the passes when we jumped on a water bus to reach St Mark's Square. Alt...

Arriving in Venice At 9:30am we checked out of our apartment in Verona, waved goodbye to our friendly host, and made our way to the station. The train to Venice began at Verona so it was already at the platform when we arrived, and we traveled to the coast very smoothly. Hopping off in Mestre, the mainland town connected to the island of Venice, we made our way to our new accommodation. When we arrived, our host was waiting for us outside. He led us into a multistorey building which functions as not only the family home but also the family business: the ground floor is a pizzeria run by his brother, the first floor is a BnB with three guest rooms, and the floors above are inhabited by our host, his mother, his niece, and other relatives. Our host excitedly showed us to our room and announced that due to a booking error we would be staying in the nicest of the three instead of the cheapest that we had booked. He then talked us through a tourist map of Venice, pointing out his favourite ...

Lake Garda Since Lake Garda, the largest lake in Italy, is just a twenty-minute train ride from Verona, we couldn't resist visiting it. We had seen the posters of aquamarine water and a skyline punctuated by craggy clifftops, and when we arrived at the station of Desenzano (often referred to as the lake's capital) we were eager to see what the lake looked like in reality. As we headed towards the town center, a storm cloud rolled over bringing spurts of showers, so as we reached the waterfront, the lake was incredibly choppy. Our legs were sprayed with water as the waves broke against the rocks surrounding the shore, and the whole scene felt like a landscape in Austria or Switzerland instead of Italy, with the 23-degree temperatures furthering this. Cloudy Skies Choppy Waters We wandered down the damp streets to discover the Italian heritage of Desenzano. The pretty pastel houses and shops selling everything from antiques to fishing tack made these streets intriguing to walk th...