Venice, Italy is not a real place. Or at least it didn’t feel like one during my trip there last week.
While planning a trip to Croatia, I discovered that Venice had ridiculously cheap rental cars. How was it possible to rent a car in Venice for $16 per day?! I needed to do some more research to get to the bottom of this. It didn’t take long for me to find out that the reason is that Venice is a carless city with no streets for vehicles.
I found a YouTube video that explained the amazing engineering of Venice and I learned that Venice was a series of about 100 small islands built on a lagoon. All of the small islands were linked by canals, which meant that the main two methods of transportation were walking and boating.
How’d I go this far in life without learning this? I don’t know but I knew that I needed to experience it in person.
My schedule had one free week between May and August and that week happened to start three days later. So I booked a last-minute flight and lodging in Venice and I tried to mentally prepare myself for what I was going to experience.
My redeye flight landed in the early morning in Venice and after disembarking I looked for a vaporetto (or boat) to get to my hotel. The boat left directly from the airport and about 45 minutes later, I arrived in Murano where I walked the canal to get to the Hyatt hotel where I’d spend the next two nights. Every few steps, I’d ask myself in disbelief, “what even is this?! Is this real life?!”
Allow me to put things into perspective. Ten hours earlier, I drove through Newark, New Jersey to get to the airport. On the way there, I passed smelly factories, generic-looking buildings, loud trucks, speeding cars, and a crackhead or two. One eight hour flight later, I was in this mystical land where the buildings were works of art, boats calmly coasted along peaceful canals, sidewalks were designed as intricate ornamental mosaics, and there was not a single crackhead in sight.
The hotel staff checked me in early at 10am, upgraded my room to a loft suite, and gave me a 90 euro credit to spend at any restaurant on their property. Talk about a warm Venetian welcome.
Over the next few days, I became fully immersed in the Venetian culture. I purchased my unlimited vaporetto pass to sail between the islands and I explored everywhere that I could.
It took some time for my mind to adjust to a car-free society, but it happened more quickly than expected. At one point, I was on a boat heading to the San Marco district and a hearse boat passed by. Minutes later, a police boat sped by, followed by an ambulance boat. Then I disembarked the vaporetto and five minutes later I passed a cement boat and a DHL package delivery boat. All of this was completely normal in my head.
The three-day trip flew by and before I knew it, it was time to head back home. On the flight back, my seat was upgraded to business class by the airline, which gave me the perfect surroundings to reflect on this last-minute trip. Typically I would shy away from traveling to countries where the primary language isn’t English, but this would have prevented me from seeing these seemingly mystical countries whose culture is nothing like what I’m used to in the US.
When the plane landed back in Newark and I walked out of the airport, I saw about 50 cars waiting outside of the arrivals section of the airport. My first thought was, “ugh, cars!”
On the drive home, I saw a crackhead. I scoffed.
Venice changed me.