Al Dente Diary 🇮🇹

July 4th & 5th 2026

I spent Saturday and Sunday exploring Venice with my friend Sophia!

We took a train into the city Saturday morning and spent the whole day walking around, shopping, eating, taking pictures and building up an itinerary for Sunday.

Everything was so ornate and intricate! I know I’ve said this about every place I’ve visited but wow it was so beautiful.

After we got off our train in Venice we walked through the city to our gorgeous hotel to drop everything off and regroup. I cannot express how grateful I was to have a solid pair of sneakers (thank you mom!) and a tote bag—I lost track of how many slow, angry and exhausted tourists we passed hauling their baggage over all of the stairs/bridges.

Our hotel was amazing (thank you soo much Bryan!) and it was in such a great area! We were a little further from the train station and Grand Canal so it wasn’t filled with as many tourist traps and it was super close to a lot of cute restaurants and smaller shops.

There was a festival in the piazza we went to, Piazza San Marco, where an entire orchestra was performing. We spent a few hours there as well listening to the music and admiring the beautiful duomo while eating gelato and enjoying a spritz!

After we spent all of Saturday shopping, sightseeing, sweating, and eating we went back to our hotel to get ready for bed and finalize any miscellaneous plans for Sunday. Every shower I’ve taken here has been a 10 minute minimum endeavor of just trying to figure out how to turn it on… I’ve been mostly successful.

That being said, you best believe I know how to wind down in a robe after a shower.

We were up bright and early the next morning to secure a gondola ride with a hot gondola guy. We only had two definite goals for Venice—go on a gondola ride and the gondola guy needed to be somewhat attractive at the least… sufficed to say it was a successful experience!

I was obviously enjoying my view… and that was before we even got to the Grand Canal!

Luscia, our gorgeous gondola guy, took us through the canals and to the Grand Canal! Then he told us all about Casanova—we went right past where he stayed, and we learned about how he was jailed and sentenced to five years for being too much of a hoe.

10/10 experience, no notes.

After our gondola ride, we spent a cool couple hours in some museums! First, we went to Museo Correr which directly connects to the the National Archaeological Museum and the Monumental Rooms of the Marciana National Library.

My friend Sophia is super into all of the Roman art and architecture so she was really excited to tell me all about the exhibits—and she was way more entertaining than the museum’s audio guide, so we ended up just turning it off so she could tell me all her fun facts!

After we spent over two hours walking all throughout the museums, we took a lunch break to refuel before going to the Doge’s palace.

I have yet to have a bad tomato here, they are all so delicious and fresh, and they gave me packets of olive oil and balsamic vinegar!

I needed Motrin by the end of the day because of how sore my neck was from staring at the ceilings.

We were there for another three hours walking through everything! Before grabbing our bags from the hotel and hopping on a train back to Verona we also had dinner at one of the restaurants nearby—we ended up becoming besties with them, I left them a Google review and they gave me some limoncello on the house (for digestion of course).

It was such a beautiful place! We got home on Sunday around 11 pm and I had just enough time to rinse off and kind of unpack before waking up a few hours later for class the next morning.

It literally took me three days to just sort through the hundreds of pictures I took—which is also why I’ve fallen behind on these posts! More updates are coming soon!

Arrivederci!! 💚🤍❤️