During our week in Bologna, Jeremy and I wanted to take a day trip. Bologna is super central, and pretty much all trains going through the region stop there. Florence is only about an hour away, the coast is a couple hours, Venice is two hours, Parma is only thirty minutes (if I recall correctly), and more. I was hoping we’d make it to Florence and Parma, but we were having such a good time in Bologna, we only made it to Venice. We took a train around 10am and arrived around noon.

We were starving, so the first thing we did was look for a place to have lunch. We wanted something with a nice view, but away from the tourist areas (which are known to be more expensive). We walked a bit but got to a point where we needed to eat immediately, and stopped at a place right on a canal. The view was exactly what I was hoping, the Aperol Spritzes were refreshing, and the food was just okay. But it was a quiet area and it suited us just fine.

After lunch, we started walking. We didn’t have a map, as per usual, so we just wandered around, sometimes hitting the huge tourists spots, sometimes walking down tiny alleyways with no one else in sight. Man, those tourist areas were packed. Venice in the summer is obviously going to be very crowded, but we didn’t really anticipate just how crowded it would be. And it was real hot. But Venice is a beautiful city, and it was fun to get lost. We asked a gondolier how much a ride would be, and it was 80 euro for 45 minutes, so unfortunately it wasn’t in our budget. I took a ride in a gondola the last time I was in Venice as a teenager with my grandma, and I remember it was really enjoyable.

After we had our fill for the afternoon, we hopped back on the train and arrived back in Bologna in the evening. A successful day trip, indeed!