How to Survive the Sensory Overload of Venice, Italy | #AdriaticHorizons

Go out to the club with your tour group the night before. Drink, but not to excess (you’re still a bit hungover from your Roman escapades). Just have enough watered-down Sex on the Beaches to dance for an hour or so and pass out as soon as you get back to your hotel. Yes, you can sleep on the bus tomorrow, but you’re gonna need more than three hours of rest. You usually do.

Stuff some more meats and cheeses in your face at the hotel’s complimentary breakfast buffet. You haven’t seen a green vegetable in days and honestly, that’s fine.

Drift off to the Call Me By Your Name soundtrack on the bus.

Down a panini at the service station because your tour manager encouraged everyone to eat something substantial before the food tour you’re about to embark on. This may seem counterintuitive, but after the food tour in Rome turned out to be more of a “snacks and drinking in the street tour,” you’re not taking any chances. Plus, rest stop food is actually good in Italy.

Arrive in Venice and take a water taxi over to the main city. Feel vaguely like you’re heading into the Magic Kingdom.

Disembark, see the crowds, and feel very much like you’re in the Magic Kingdom.

Meet up with the two skinny Italian ladies leading your food tour, which honestly just feels unfair. Follow them around town for the next hour or so, learning more about the canals and outdoor markets, and snacking on cicchetti and wine in little alleys and bars. Feel like you could actually maybe live there if only the Italian government would grant you a visa.

Reunite with the rest of your tour group with the instruction to return in an hour and half for the gondola ride you paid for earlier in the week/a lifetime ago.

Take the elevator up to the top of the San Marco Campanile. Marvel at the aerial views of the city. Do not take a single good photo of yourself on this excursion.

Follow a group of your fellow travelers who apparently know the way to a shop that will let you fill up a one liter plastic water bottle full of wine for 3 Euro. You’re not crazy about this plan, but you’re also not crazy about the prospect of being alone in a difficult-to-navigate city without a phone. Plus, you’re not one to turn down cheap wine.

Immediately get lost. Get frustrated with the group for following someone with Google Maps (notoriously faulty in Venice) over your brilliant navigational skills. Voice your frustrations and realize that you may be making this less fun for everyone. Apologize and follow the map.

Whine a bunch about the heat and the crowds and the little back alleys and the fact that you only have 20 minutes until your meet-up time and maybe you should abandon the whole venture and try to find your way back. Feel everyone getting annoyed with you.

Find the wine shop, a little hole in the wall with giant barrels of wine stacked on either side. Pay the aforementioned 3 Euro for a plastic bottle of Pinot Noir that’s bigger than your face. Taste the wine. It’s...fresh? Let’s go with that.

Immediately envy your British tourmate who gets two glass bottles to take home, where they can age into something more pleasant. Make a mental note to update your Tinder bio to “Only considering EU citizens.”

Rush back to the meeting spot for the gondola ride. Learn that alcohol is prohibited on said gondola ride and your liter of alcoholic juice will have to wait a little longer.

Float through the canals of Venice with six of your tourmates. Immediately run out of battery in your DSLR. Accept your fate and just chill for a bit. There’s a bit of expected gondola traffic, but it’s a surprisingly lovely respite from the chaos of the streets.

Step off the boat and search the streets for pasta. Take a few more sips from your wine jug. Decide that you got your money’s worth and ditch it in the nearest trash can.

Inhale a plate of spaghetti carbonara. Carbs are necessary when you’re averaging 20,000 steps a day.

Take the water taxi back to the mainland and head to your hotel for the evening.

Notice that every surface of your hotel room is covered in different prints and thank your past self for not finishing that bottle of wine.

Crash and get ready to do it all again tomorrow.