Girls Night Out…in Venice?!

I have never really had a strong desire to visit Venice, but just recently, out of blue, I felt my stay in Europe wouldn’t be complete until I saw the place. So when Anna mentioned that she and her friend from high school were going Saturday through Monday, I immediately signed Erin and myself up for a quick weekend get away, or better yet, a Saturday Girls Night Out.

After being forewarned by a Venice local about the high price of the city, and finding out my only two options to get to the city from the airport were either a 12 euro, 1 hour water bus ride or an allegedly faster private water taxi for EUR95, I wasn’t immediately impressed by the place. Seriously, for a large tourist city, what kind of options are those? But thankfully, like most of my first impressions, this one was wrong. Seriously wrong. I ended up LOVING the city.

I met Erin at the main square, San Marco, and she quickly walked me backed to our hotel nearby to drop my bags, meet up with Anna and her friend and head out. And so, the four of us, connected by two friends from Zurich, headed directly to the closest “Pub” and began, what ended up being an 11 hour Venetian style pub crawl, well, almost a traditional Venetian style pub crawl. After 2 traditional stand up, tapas serving bars, we got lazy and found a restaurant that served cheap wine, and what initially started out as a cheap carafe of wine and an appetizer, turned into 3 carafes of wine, 2 appetizers, pasta and dessert. By the time we paid our bill and got directions to a fun dance club in the area, the four of us were chatting it up like we had all known each other for years.

Continuing the party, we went in search of the dance club. Going against our only rule of not crossing any large bodies of water (revised from not crossing any bodies of water, which limited us to two blocks) and against the general travel rule of not walking down dark deserted alleys, we crossed the grand canal, walked down a dark deserted alley, found the name of the club hanging over a closed door, knocked on that closed door, were greeted by a burly old Italian woman who requested 10 euro for admittance and one drink ticket and found ourselves alone in an empty bar. Apparently, Venice is not known for its night life, but thankfully, we had found the only place in town that had dancing and we were just an hour too early. Exactly one hour later the place was packed and in full swing, and a short 4 hours later, we stumbled back out into the alley to begin our trek home, stopping through San Marco square for a quick look at the flooded and empty square, which had, only hours earlier, been filled with street vendors, sight-seers and tourists feeding and holding the pigeons (probably the most disturbing things I have seen in a while).

Needless to say that after the four hours of sleep that night, and constant drift of snow, the following day of sight seeing was limited. But the town showed enough promise to guarantee a return trip.