As we arrived to Venice at 1 AM in the night, exhausted, thirsty, and hungry, there weren’t really too many options for finding an accommodation. You can’t actually drive into the old town, because there are no roads – just canals and tiny streets for pedestrians.

By the way, before getting to Venice we had a funny incident on one of the pay tolls that can be found in most of the European highways: I had never driven in a highway with pay tolls before, so when we entered the first highway in Italy I didn’t really know what to do or what to expect.

When you’re leaving the highway, you are supposed to insert your ticket in a machine that then counts how much you have to pay, but of course I hadn’t realized that we were supposed to take the ticket when entering the highway.

There was this one guy speaking for us through a shitty loudspeaker that I could not understand at all. I just kept repeating “sorry, I don’t understand what you are saying” as he shouted louder and louder and got more angry.

I couldn’t understand a single word of his bad Italian accent as he tried to punish me through the loudspeaker and finally he gave up and opened the gate and let us through it without a cent after ten minutes that felt like three hours.

What a perfect way of saving 8 euros.

I should have found out how the system works – it’s really simple when you just take the ticket when entering the highway. The guy was obviously trying to tell me to insert the ticket into the machine, but it’s kind of hard if you don’t have it and you have no idea what he is mumbling.

We drove first to the parking area that is located just in front of the City of Canals but figured out that finding accommodation would be impossible because we hadn’t booked it in advance, and yes, it was also already 1 AM, so the only wise option was to drive back a little bit and find a calm and peaceful spot where we could sleep in the car and wait for the dawn.

Sleeping in a small car is not fun – it’s very uncomfortable, and the fact that it was still really hot and humid outside didn’t help either.

The good thing was that I was so tired that I could have slept anywhere, so it didn’t take too long after killing the few mosquitoes that had sneaked into the car to get asleep.

Wakey, wakey

This should be the best advice for anyone like me that has often difficulties waking up: Sleep in a hot car.

I woke up at 7 AM, still hungry, thirsty, and sweaty – exactly at the same time as my travel mate and girlfriend Ansku.

We drove the car to the parking building and then walked over the bridge to the old city that so many people in the world dream about.

The view was really nice: canals everywhere, old buildings that have seen millions of people and different life stories pass by, and tourists – lots of tourists.

After walking around a bit we managed to found a café that offered very good Italian coffee and fresh fruit salad with natural yoghurt for only three euros, so the mood started to lift a little bit after the short night in the Italian version of Finnish sauna.

Some facts about Venice

There are about 270 000 inhabitants living in this city that is quite different from anything else I’ve seen in my life. 60 000 people live in the historic city of Venice, which is the place all the tourists want to visit.

It has been described as the most beautiful city built by man and one of Europe’s most romantic cities, and I can agree with that at least to some extent – the canals give the city a particular feel, just like in Amsterdam, which is one of my favorite cities of the ones I’ve seen so far.

The only thing that prevented my romance with the city from becoming a full long-term relationship was the fact that there were far too many tourists for my taste. Maybe it’s just me, but I prefer places that are original, but not too well marketed to attract so many people from all over the world that you can’t really find locals from the masses anymore. Maybe that’s why I only chose the rare photos without any tourists for this blog post.

Anyway, it was such a pleasure walking around the old city, watching the famous sights and taking photos of the canals and beautiful buildings. The restaurant we ate in wasn’t really the best one during the trip because the prices were quit high compared to the quality, but I guess it’s the same in every tourist destination.

We didn’t actually spend that many hours in Venice because we kind of felt that we had seen everything we wanted to see after walking around the old city for half a day, getting lost a few times without a map, and walking so much that our feet were yelling for mercy.

The gondolas still looked very nice, so I naturally had to take a few more photos of those before it was time to head for another adventure.

It wasn’t as easy to get out of Italy as it was to get there, but I’ll write more about that next time.

Here are some more photos of the lovely but touristy Venice:

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