Venice, Italy

I’ve spent the last few days on trains. Since there are no direct trains from Croatia to Spain, I rode from Dubrovnik to Zagreb to Venice to Geneva to Lyon to Montpellier to Barcelona to Madrid. Whew. Transit is exhausting.

Stopping for one day in Venice was a welcome rest during this period.

The tourist portion of Venice is actually an island. Or a series of 117 islands, to be exact. A bus took me from my campsite on the mainland across a bridge to Venice Island, the largest and most visited island. In addition to being a tourist hot spot, Venice Island is also home to about 60,000 people (another 176,000 people live on the mainland, and 31,000 live on the other 116 islands).

Like New Orleans, Venice Island is currently below sea level, making it particularly susceptible to the ravages of climate change.

The island is crisscrossed by canals. The canals are actually natural waterways that were enhanced by the Venetians with pilings and dredging to make them navigable. The largest canal is the Grand Canal (pictured below).

Here are some more Venice pictures:

I stayed at a campsite in Venice. I have seen campsites advertised on hostelworld.com before, but I always assumed that you needed your own tent to take advantage of the facilities. Not the case. The campsite in Venice had its own tents set up on concrete slabs. Here is what they looked like:

The campsite was clean, secure, and comfortable. And for only 11 Euros per night, camping is worth it for the budget-conscious traveler.

I would recommend going the hostelworld.com route for booking as campsites, hostels, and other accommodation are customer-rated on the website. Since ratings are everything, I’ve noticed that the staff at these places usually go out of their way to cater to guests.

If you see lodging with bad reviews and ratings it’s easy to stay clear. (As a rule of thumb, I usually pick lodging with an 80% or better rating, though lodging with lower ratings is sometimes cheaper.) I have had no problems with any of the accommodations I booked off of hostelworld.