Venice Day 1 ~ How To Find Your Hotel?

I booked my hotel through Booking.com. The reason why? I can cancel it up to a certain period of time if necessary. Based solely on Tripadvisor reviews and costs, I choosed Casa Cosmo. It cost me Euro 370 (triplets) for 2 nights.

Important bench mark : Furla, Max Mara, Bata Shop

Well.. Venice is an expansive city. So kalau nak jimat sikit plan and book awal-awal dan check kalendar. Winter time selalunya boleh dapat hotel murah sedikit dan less touristy tapi pertengahan February Venice Carnivale berlangsung, time tu prices semua melambung and very difficult to get a room for sure.

Opps..meleret-leret pula I kan? tadi nak cerita bagaimana lah nak cari hotel ni...  Finding your way around Venice is very difficult, and you are bound to get lost, probably several times. The town is full of lost tourists with their suitcases, who can't understand where 'take a left, then a right' went wrong. Almost every tourist will also tell you stories of the time they got lost and stumbled across the best sights of their trip.

All the normal logic of street-layout is suspended. Many (perhaps the majority) of streets do not lead anywhere useful, and simply provide access for local residents or businesses. Few lanes continue for a significant distance, and signposting would simply be too complex. Choices are presented every few yards - if you are navigating with a map, you'll need to check it constantly. Few maps show every little dead-end alley, or every street name, so it can be very hard to follow their directions. Try to buy the most detailed town plan that you can find. A compass is of some assistance in an emergency, but is not really much help in choosing a route, thanks to the winding street layout and dead ends. It's extremely easy to lose your sense of direction, and it will usually be better to ask for help than to spend ages frowning over a map. Venetians are used to giving directions, which will usually be very brief and followed by 'sempre dritto' (straight on).

Addresses in Venice are even less helpful than maps, and there is practically no connection between the two. A map may tell you the name of alleys and squares, but a typical Venetian address is simply: San Marco 1323. Venice is split into districts called sestieri, and each building in a sestiere is numbered in one long consecutive sequence. Venice's random and informal street names are not officially part of an address, although many businesses will helpfully provide one. To pin-point a location therefore, you don't just need the brief official address, you also need a street/square name and also some helpful geographical pointer, e.g. a nearby church.

Even street names are far from straightforward. Most have evolved to describe an established location and mean descriptive things like 'Alley of the carpenters' or 'Courtyard with a well'. Consequently there are often several places with the same or similar names. If you are locating a street, you will require the name of the sestiere as well (what's more, sometimes there is more than one place with the same name in one sestiere). And even armed with official address, and street name, your task still isn't simple.

The next confusion is that sometimes one place may have more than one name. Even one name may have different versions - many streets in Venice are known both by their dialect name and by the Italianised version. Either of these may appear on maps. This is why you'll see many variations of placenames such as Fondamenta Nove. Streetsigns are not always easy to spot in narrow lanes. They may offer one or more variations on the name (o means 'or'), and they are often joined on the walls by signs identifying the parish (parocchia) and any adjacent canal (rio) or bridge (ponte).

If you're spending a long time in Venice or are just very interested in the city's structure, there is a good book called Calli, Campielli e Canali which provides extremely large scale street plans, along with property numbers. It covers Venice and the lagoon islands, and enables you to locate any address in the city, as well as providing some background information in Italian and English on landmarks and principal buildings. You can buy it in most bookshops in Venice. Sadly, it's rather too bulky to carry around as you explore.

Here are some of the most common titles for places in Venice:
Calle - a lane or alley
Campo - public open space (irregularly-shaped and less formal than a 'piazza'). Campo means field, and once these were rough-surfaced in earth or grass, and used for burials. They are still the hubs of their neighbourhoods.
Campiello - a small square or courtyard.
Corte - courtyard.
Fondamenta - canalside walkway.
Piazza - public square. There is only one in Venice, Piazza San Marco.
Ponte - bridge.
Piscina - filled-in pool of water.
Ruga - significant lane, generally one which used to contain shops.
Ramo - branch off a more important thoroughfare, whose name it takes.
Rio - canal.
Rio terrà or terà - filled-in canal, now a street.
Salizzada - name given to the earliest streets to be paved.
Sottoportego - covered passage under a building, often leading only to water.

As a first timer, I really lost in the Calle.

So, I did what most clever traveler does... Called the hotel of course. Make sure your phone is roaming okkkkk.... I tell the hotel where exactly I am (name any prominent bench mark) and what clothes (color) I'm wearing. He found me.

Casa Cosmo is just a lodging accommodation but room were clean and spacious for Europe standards. And the family who managed it very friendly and helpful.

Check-in went smoothly quick. They just need our passport. As usual no deposit needed. Paid when checkout.

*Rest for awhile before ventured again and get lost in Venice.