A couple of hours in Venice

After spending 6 hours in a car, we finally reached the town of Mestre where we took a train and headed off to Venezia. As any other vacation goes, there was obviously a few mishaps. The first mishap of the day was, our car refused to start. Then again, our car is almost as old as I am so we weren't surprised. Our car had impeccable timing. We called up the mechanic, he said he'd be there in 30 minutes. For my mom, this was the biggest mishap. Not the car, but the delay. For me, it meant more time to do my face, make some cup noodles and watch Sex and the City.

We finally got on the road at 11am. I slept most of the way, much to my mother's dismay. I mean, think about it. What more can you say in a 6 hour car ride to someone you've lived with your whole life? She asked me about my summer reading list which didn't last very long when she realized I didn't actually have one. She then urged me to make a summer reading list, which only aggravated me so I fell asleep again.

The main transportation in Venice is actually by boat. I don't know how I feel about that. I love the ocean, I just hate being surrounded by it to a point where I feel like I can't get out. Venice as a whole is like a maze. I wouldn't live here. Sure, it's pretty. It has beautiful blue skies. The people are lovely. But it's basically a city catered to tourists. I see no culture, no depth. I tried finding some culture with the masks. Unfortunately, half of them were made in China and glittered up. So I bought an authentic Commedia dell'Arte mask for Mrs. MacInnes and a puppet of Sr. Pantalone, one of my favorite Commedia dell'Arte characters.

Food in Venice is generally overpriced. But the atmosphere is lovely. You're sipping a glass of Prosecco, while the sun is setting and you have either old Italian men hitting on you or loud, round Indian men hitting on you. Not that that adds to the atmosphere, because trust me it doesn't, but sans the hitting part, it's really rather nice.

Venice isn't my favorite city in Italy. I still think Florence is and probably always will be. Trieste as well, but that's because I have fond memories of both places. Trieste for my visits to the space observatory. All in all, Venice is nice to look at. Nice to stay at for a couple of days but I definitely expected more and I think it's slightly overrated.