Venice, Italy: Photo Gallery

At the train station in Rome waiting for our train to Venice.

Waiting for the Trenitalia train to board.

The train ride from Rome to Venice took 6 hours. We went through a lot of tunnels, but also got to see a lot of the Italian countryside.

This was Orvieto, one stop along the way.

The train was pretty cramped and after six hours, it was hard to find a comfortable position. Lydia managed to fall asleep for a little while though.

We stayed in a small town called Mestre near the Venetian canals. Here, we’re carrying our packs to our vacation rental. Night was coming so we were glad to get to our home base for the night.

This was our vacation rental in Mestre.

It was small but quite comfortable. We made dinner and then read for a while before going to bed. We were glad to be in Mestre where there were fewer tourists and lots of friendly locals. It was also a lot cheaper to stay there than to get a hotel room in the center of Venice!

The next morning, we had to catch a train from Mestre to Venice.

Like colicky babies, we tend to be less fussy when we’re moving from place to place than when we’re sitting in one place waiting.

Lydian is holding up the train ticket. It only took about 10 to 15 minutes to get from Mestre to Venice.

Once we’d purchased a ticket, we had 1 hour to get on a train to Venice.

Venice is made up of 118 islands that are separated by canals and linked together by bridges.

We arrived in Venice in the morning.

Even though it’s the “off-season” when there are fewer tourists in Venice, it was still crowded in the train station.

Venice has a lot of problems right now. In fact, one of the biggest problems is tourists. On any given day in Venice, there are more tourists than there are locals. Tourists don’t care about the city as much as the local people do which leads to a lot of unhappiness among the people living in Venice.

There are lots of bridges in Venice. This is a city where there are waterways instead of streets and gondolas instead of cars.

This is the Grand Canal in Venice or the main waterway that people use to get from island to island.

Lots ‘n lots of tourists. Many people today are concerned that someday soon, all the locals will leave the city. Then, instead of being an amazing place where people live and work, it will be like Disneyworld…just a “theme park” or a museum.

It’s an amazing place.

There are stairs leading down into the water in various places along the sidewalks.

This man was selling a selection of books from his boat. That’s something we don’t ever see in Nebraska!

Cruise ships cause a lot of problems in Venice. They bring too many tourists into the city while also increasing the tide which causes the buildings to erode. There are only about 58,000 Venetians, but 60,000 tourists visit Venice every day.