Venice

Lausanne is exceptionally well-connected, so it's ridiculously simple to catch a train to Venice, one of the most beautiful and mysterious and wonderful cities in the world. There is a train that runs from Geneva (and Lausanne) to Venice via Milan, and it does so every day.

Venice!

Tanya and I took advantage of this very train line to go there over the weekend, to meet up with Tanya's brother Dave and his fiancée Paula, who are travelling through Europe. Last time I was in Italy there were train strikes which increased our journey time home from three hours to "maybe tomorrow". When we arrived in Milan this time we discovered that the very same train lines were on strike again! Perhaps they thought "they're not getting the message. Let's give it another 14 months". Luckily for us, this time we were travelling on the ever-reliable CFF so we were unaffected. I felt terrible for all the people with furrowed brows at ticket counters.

In any case, we made it to Venice and it was wonderful to catch up with Dave and Paula. We wandered the streets and ate gelato and even took a gondola ride, which was unexpectedly an absolute highlight. Floating down the canals, our gondolier sang cheesy love songs in Italian, knew just about everyone we passed, yelled "ciao!", swapped good-natured barbs with the other gondoliers, blew a giant sloppy kiss at a woman watching from a second story window, giggled cheekily, and pointed out things we might be interested in along the way.

Ambulance boats in Venice.

Another picture of the ambulance boats.

I have heard that the idea in Venice is to make sure you get lost, to which I say - is it possible not to? We stayed at an AirBnB place, and the host gave us directions to the train station. His directions were as follows: go left, cross a bridge, go right, then there's the labyrinth, then there's the train station. He was right, of course. As the four of us traversed the city by foot we had a fantastic time just finding the way, trying different paths, many of which ended in a canal or a locked gate. It is also striking how you only need to go one or two streets from the busy areas to be in a completely different-feeling Venice, where we as tourists were less the majority.

Street art of a tourist.

And street art of a pig.

We took a water-bus to Murano. Murano is famed for its glass, and there was shop after shop selling glass of all shapes and sizes. Interestingly, Murano became a glassmaking centre when, in 1291, Venice ordered all glassmakers to move their workshops there, because they didn't want the fire risk in Venice itself.

A giant glass sculpture in Murano.

While we were in Murano black thunder clouds starting building over the city and a giant storm swept in. (Incidentally, I think all my blog posts recently have involved a storm, so I am pleased this is no exception). We caught the boat back to Venice right as the storm hit, with torrential rain, lighting and thunder, the full works. Even after the main storm passed, the light show continued for a long time, and we were treated to a spectacular display of forked lightning.

The storm approaching over Murano.

Spectacular clouds just before the storm hit.

It was a short trip to Venice, but the city more than lived up to its reputation of being generally fantastic.