Venice 4|6

Welcome to another and much shorter post about our Venice trip!

For our 4th day in Venice together, we had decided to go to the beach. According to what I'd read online, Alessandro, and our host, Lido di Venezia (Venice Lido) was the place to go. Lido is yet another island outside the main part of Venice and it's the only place with cars(!)

We'd actually planned to go in the morning, around 9am, but because we stayed out late for yet another funny/awkward night with the Italians, we went to bed too late.

Rather than going during the day (when the UV-index would be at its highest), we followed the advice of our host and planned to go around 5pm. This was an amazing decision and I'll tell you why later.

We grabbed some quick breakfast, which consisted of some yogurt and half a watermelon that we'd bought two days prior. The other half we cut into pieces and planned to bring it to the beach with us.

My outfit of the day consisted of light, comfortable clothes since we'd be spending the warmest hours of the day exploring a few more things that we wanted to see before going to the beach.

The first place we went to was a Mango store near the main station vaporetto terminal. It's a brand that I used to like a lot when I lived in America but I couldn't find anything I like there this time. Jasmin found a cute pair of shorts, though, so our trip wasn't in vain!

While I was waiting for Jasmin in the changing room, BTS's Boy With Luv started playing. K-pop is truly spreading.

While walking around, we came by yet another pirate themed candy store. Just how many are there of them in Venice?!

Look at those giant marshmallow bananas! The were the same size as actual bananas!

Jasmin also threatened to buy me one of the lollipops in the lower right corner. That 변태.

Next stop was a fancy bakery that Jasmin had seen during one of her first days here. It LOOKED super nice and all but the dessert in there were all these tiny pieces of fancy chocolate and what-not that didn't tickle my fancy. We ended up enjoying a moment of cold (their A/C was ON) before going on our way. Too bad.

Next next stop was a bridge I wanted to see. While on Torcello, I noticed a small bridge without rails. While heading back to the boat, Jasmin asked if I wanted to take a picture there but it was too hot and there were too many tourists around for me to want to stop in my track. And then she told me how she'd seen a similar bridge in Venice, which was the one we went to.

So here you have it. A small bridge without rails. I wanted to walk on it but it seemed rather private seeing as it lead directly to what looked like someone's house.

While I was squatting down to get that perfect angle, Jasmin struck again!!

She said she was censoring my butt so that no one else would see it. Jasmin makes a great possessive fake girlfriend.

The day would not be complete without ice cream. I'm so sad that I apparently forgot to take a picture of where we bought this because that strawberry ice cream was delicious!

We returned home to remove our make-up and switch into our bikinis. Which match, of course, because couple clothes is an adorable concept.

We packed a small bag and then headed to the vaporetto terminal to buy tickets for Lido. Each way cost €7.5 (so €15 in total), which was fine. But if you're planning to visit several islands, including Lido, you can also buy a €20 ticket which, to my understanding, will let you use the vaporettos (boat busses) however much you would like for the next 24 hours.

We were unsure about our plans the day after so we decided against the 24-hour pass.

It was easy enough to buy the ticket and find the boarding spot.

About 15-20 minutes after boarding, we arrived at Lido and WAUW what a different it made to suddenly be around cars. We hadn't paid attention to just how quiet Venice had been before coming to Lido and being surrounded by cars once again. It rally made me appreciate the quiet we had experienced the days prior.

I'm still a bit confused about the concept of private and non-private beaches. Our host had told us where to go to get to one of the free beaches but it would require riding a bus and we didn't feel like doing that. Instead we went into a little corner shop at the terminal and asked for the nearest beach. "Just go straight for about 10 minutes," the man said and so we did.

We came to a beach that was ..not-free but also free to use. We could place our towels on the sand and swim for free but we'd have to pay to use the chairs and beach umbrellas. There were also lockers but those were only for the guests (the guests of a nearby hotel, I guess).

Well, as long as we had water and a spot to put our stuff, we weren't picky.

Even though it was 5pm, there were SO many people. We originally just wanted to go to the beach to swim but the whole experience was so much more exciting with that many people around us. At the same time, it wasn't too crowded either even though it could look like it on my pictures.

There were enough people around our spot for us to not worry about our things getting stolen. At the same time there was also enough space in the water for us to swim around and even play ball - and that is exactly what we did!

Only.. except for a ball, which we didn't have, we gathered some of the seaweed floating around and made a ball out of it.

Every time we threw it, it would spectacularly begin to fall apart right before Jasmin caught it. When she threw it to me, it would never go far enough due to the sea breeze and I'd dramatically jump after it and crash into the water like a whale. A truly majestic view.

While we were playing, I had noticed two guys near us looking our way, laughing once in a while. Suddenly one of them threw a bigger piece of seaweed in our direction that we picked it up and tied to our ball. OUR BALL WAS NOW COMPLETED 🔥🔥

Thanks, random Italian dudes!

Now every time we caught the ball, it was followed by a small victory dance, which seemed to entertain them even more.

We didn't get to play too long before 3 other Italian guys came over, threw a beach volleyball to me, and asked if we wanted to play.

Jasmin was into the game and hit the ball pretty well but also kind of screamed/groaned in this funny way every time the ball flew in her direction - so much that the guys started imitating her. I just naturally suck at ball games so every time I made a kind of weirdly curved ball, they would splash me with water.

A 4th guy came over and joined our game. He was one of their friends, apparently. This guy really liked picking me up for some reason and throwing me in the water. Then a 5th guy came over (just how many friends did these guys have?!) and the game continued. But when their 6th friend joined, the ball flew farther away and when I came back after having picked it up, Jasmin's face changed. She was scowling at this new guy while the others were laughing. I first thought someone had splashed her with water again but then she turned to me and said in a hushed, angry voice that 6th guy had grabbed her butt once and then again after she told him no.

That's when we decided it was time to leave.

We briskly walked out of the water, grabbed our stuff, and didn't stop before we were back at the road. Wasting no time to escape in, we wrapped ourselves with our towels and walked towards the terminal. We didn't even stop to put on our flip-flops but just kept walking with our sandy, bare feet. While walking, I saw a sign depicting people in swimwear and then a big cross over. I'm not sure if it was forbidden to walk around in just swimwear or just frowned upon by the cafés/restaurants, nor do I know whether us wearing those big towels made it better or worse. We did get a few stares but the only thing that mattered in that moment was to get away from the beach and the booty-grabber.

Jasmin's butt IS nice but NO ONE is allowed to grab it but her boyfriend and I (๑•̀ㅁ•́๑) !!

I later asked Alessandro, the Italian waiter, if it was normal there to just grab people's behind like that to which he said yes. I'm still skeptical, though ༼ σ ‸ σ ༽  

When we came to the terminal, I stopped to take pictures. Then I looked over at Jasmin and laughed at just how out of place she looked and took her picture as well. Jasmin then took MY picture also and you can see me posing super weird and laughing at my own ridiculousness.

Here's the view from the terminal towards the rest of the island -

- and towards the sea.

Getting back to Venice was harder than getting there. The system would probably have made sense if we'd just followed the signs but the workers there tried telling us where to go and ended up giving us different information. When we finally found the right queue, there were too many people boarding the boat and we were called back on shore and put into a new queue behind a bar.

Jasmin remembered the watermelon we had bought so we spent the time waiting for the next boat, which wouldn't be there before half an hour later or so, eating it.

There were a lot of people on the next boat as well but we managed to get a spot on the staircase outside so Jasmin could look out.
I stood at the bottom of the stairs and moved up towards Jasmin as more people got off.

I took a lot of pictures before discovering my reflection in the little side mirror. Since when have boats had that? Is that normal?

Ah yes. Although not obvious in the photos, the sun was way strong and it was hard to see my screen. I took this picture of the beautiful sundown.. only to realize when I came home that I had simultaneously caught it's reflection on this bald man's shiny scalp.

Here's a speed limit!
(I still can't get over the fact that everything is boats and how they have 'roads', ambulance, and now also street signs in on the water)

This was the view once we'd entered Venice. We got off not near this bridge but the next one down.

We had a late dinner, which consisted of take-out pasta and pizza from a place near our apartment. I didn't take a picture of the restaurant but it's very close to the Guglie waterbus stop and definitely worth a visit.

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