Boats & Trains - Travel Across Italy

Monday arrived in Venice with ample sunshine and slightly warmer temperatures - which I heartily welcomed! I brought two jackets to Italy and neither one was necessarily built for freezing temperatures. We had to check out of the AirBnB by 11:00 and needed to catch the Vaporetto to the train station, get a quick lunch and be on our train by about 12:15... it was scheduled to leave at 12:30. 

We had our croissants and espresso again and made sure that everything was packed up and ready to roll before heading out the door around 9:00 to explore the waterfront of the Grand Canal and pick up a few souvenirs. The gorgeous sunshine illuminated the canals and alley ways, there were people out and about everywhere and the lines for taking a gondola ride were backed up!

We walked in the opposite direction we'd explored on Sunday and we're treated to multiple waterfront views and delightful undiscovered alley ways filled with unique shops and architecture. Venice certainly has stunning architecture going for it - so it's unfortunate to think that the city is sinking! Throughout our exploration of Venice, we saw what appeared to be tables stacked on one another and placed in the middle of the alley ways...

Our tour guide from the previous day had explained what those odd table like structures were: they were tables of a sort, that were placed end to end to allow people to walk when the city floods...as it is apt to do every few weeks. The sinking of the city of Venice has led to the seasonal phenomenon called Acqua Alta, which means high water in Italian and usually occurs between the Autumn and Spring seasons. Just weeks before we arrived, the whole of Saint Mark's Square was flooded. Eek!

We returned to our AirBnb and picked up our luggage, easily hopped on board the Vaporetto and made our way toward the train station to catch our train to Rome. We made it in plenty of time to grab a slice of pizza (me - I ate all the pizza y'all) and a sandwich before hopping on our high speed train and making our way out of Venice. Suddenly the water disappeared, the land was restored all around us and cars were everywhere!

Riding the high speed train...

Hey you - look here!

 The high speed train ride took just over three hours to take us from Venice through the Italian countryside, with a stop in Florence before we pulled into a rainy Rome. The train was comfortable and in my humble opinion - the perfect way to travel! While the sun was shining when we left Venice, it was certainly not doing that when we arrived in Rome, so we got an Uber to our AirBnb and when we made our way up to the fourth floor walk up (stairs again y'all - all the stairs), we were greeted with an incredible view from the front balcony...

I will admit - I became a bit emotional when I first glimpsed the Colosseum. I've always been fascinated by ancient history and seeing a city like Rome has always been at the top of my bucket list. There was something absolutely breathtaking about peering out the window of our apartment and seeing a structure that has stood in place for hundreds of years. It was amazing y'all. Just amazing. 

The AirBnB host had made recommendations for dinner and one just happened to be a block away from our apartment, so we stepped out into the drizzly night and walked up the sidewalk to Clementine's - which was this delightful little restaurant with just four small tables and a brick work ceiling. It was so precious y'all...just so precious...if you can call a restaurant that, ha-ha!

Clementine's

 The waiter was a perfect character, chatting about everything on the menu and making recommendations for each person! We spied fried ricotta and fried parmigiana regiano on the menu and we'd initially considered just starting with the parmigiana but he assured we needed to sample both, eating the ricotta first and then the parmigiana...which was a sharper tasting cheese and following the ricotta would be "an explosion of flavor on the palate"...

He wasn't wrong ya'll - but then again, I find it hard to believe one can ever go wrong with fried cheese, you know?

Ricotta on the left - Parmigiana Reggiano on the right.

Cherry Tart - Tiramisu - Strawberry Cake - Mango Cheesecake

We had dessert after our meal and then made our way back to the apartment to get some shut eye ahead of our first full day in Rome. There is a lot to see and we technically only had two days to see it all.

This picture will be the least picture heavy - because coming up in my next post: the Colosseum and some other notable Roman locations. So yea...there will be all the pictures!