Earlier this week I embarked on a short trip to Treviso, a city with a rich and impressive history, located in the north-east of Italy, close to both the Alps and the Adriatic coast.
Contrary to my habit, I had NOT prepared this trip in great detail. Basically the only things I had done were: book a flight (6 weeks before), book a hotel (3 weeks before) and scroll through some websites promising to show the “Top 15 things to see in Treviso” or something similar (1 day before). The reason why I did not prepare more was that I decided to start taking advantage of my connections in the local guides community. And that was definitely a very good decision.
As some of you will know, Treviso is also the city where local guide superstar and fellow Connect Moderator @ErmesT is living. And in fact I had selected Treviso as my destinationbecause Ermes is living there - I actually plan to repeat this procedure for some other european destinations and thereby make a series of EuroMiniMeetups, one every couple of months or so.
Ermes turned out to be the perfect host (which should not be a surprise to anyone who has had the pleasure to meet him). Before the trip he sent me a list (a Maps list, obviously) of hotels and without hesitation I booked the one he described on the list as the perfect choice if you want to stay in the city center. It was indeed a perfect suggestion: first class location, modern, well-maintained and at a good price. The day of my arrival, he then took a day off from work and took the role upon him of personal taxi driver (including picking me up from the airport) and of course local guide (in the tourist sense of the phrase). He also showed me the region around Treviso, with the wonderful vineyards where some of the grapes are cultivated that bring us Prosecco, and we even ended up in the Alps (where the temperature was luckily much more bearable than the 33° in the city center - one week earlier they had even seen the temperature rise above 40°).
A surprising discovery we came across was this sign pointing out that there is a bike route starting from Munich, so we immediately messaged @TorM (who is from Munich) to grab a bike and join us in Treviso, but Torben turned out to be a real spoilsport, as he blatantly refused to do this, with some silly excuse that he was in Frankfurt at the time - as if there would be no connection between Frankfurt and Munich 
What made this EuroMiniMeetup even more special was the fact that I also met another fellow Connect moderator, @JaneBurunina , who is from Ukraine, but currently also residing in Italy, due to the extremely difficult situation in her home country. We really had some great time (and food, and drinks 
) together.
Armed with the knowledge Ermes shared with me on the first day, I then explored Treviso on the next day. And I can now testify from personal experience: it is very much worth a visit, with its historical buildings, museums, water infrastructure, ancient city gates and lots of nice little corners. And not to forget: shadow, lots of places with shadow (e.g. galleries alongside the streets), which is really great on such hot days.
Here are some of the pictures I took during my walk through the city (and its famous gates), a visit to the cathedral and a visit to 2 of the museums.
Of course Google Maps was a great help during my exploration of Treviso, and although I had planned to perform some of my usual local guides activities (mainly edits - if only to check what Ermes had missed ), I simply had no time to do so, as there is so much to see! I will certainly write a bunch of reviews in the coming days to catch up on the local guide activity, but I wanted to write this recap post first (life is all about setting priorities). When I came across the statue in the picture below, one of the Maps reviews complained that it was quite hard to photograph because of the building behind it having a very similar colour. But in my view, the two objects, statue and building, can perfectly be framed in a single picture and tell a story in doing so.
The square where they are located is called Square of Independence (some region or group is always fighting for independence throughout all of history - my educated guess is that this will unfortunately never stop) and the statue was placed there to celebrate that independence. But the building in the background, which is now a fashion shop of a (in)famous brand, by contrast illustrates the new, overarching dependency of our current world: commerce and money, causing tremendous dependencies for an increasing amount of people.
During my stay in Treviso, I also became aware that there is another city not far away from Treviso that might be worth a visit. You might have heard of it - Venice. So I took a train and travelled on to Venice on the final day of my trip. By the way: don’t believe the websites that claim you need to purchase your train tickets in advance as they might be more expensive on the day of your trip. I just bought a ticket from the vending machine in the railway station upon arrival there and paid €3,70, whereas buying it from the cheapest website in advance would have cost €3,90.
And, yes, Venice is really nice, but for me as a visitor, there is one big problem: all those tourists! (I had especially planned my travel to Treviso on weekdays to avoid weekend crowds, and this worked fine in Treviso, but not in Venice - I guess that it will be crowded all days of the week.) As Jean-Paul Sartre already said: L’enfer c’est les autres (typically translated as Hell is other people)
Nevertheless, Venice is of course very impressive, and especially catching the first glimpse of the buildings on San Marco is an experience that took my breath away for a few seconds.
To finish off some practical topics that were important for me, so I’m sharing them in case they might also be important for you - should you consider visiting Treviso (or Venice, of course). Treviso has an airport of its own (used mostly by low fare companies); it’s a rather small one, but I consider that to be an advantage as e.g. the time needed to get through security is quite short on such airports. The airport is less than 4 km from the central station, which has trains to Venice every 15 minutes or so (the travel time is then between 20 and 40 minutes, depending on the type of train).
I was also able to pay by card for everything, which was great as I have been living cashless for several years now. For some reason contactless payment did not work on my credit card, though, so I had to type my pin code all the time (which I still find less annoying than having to struggle with cash all the time).
And what about you, dear fellow local guide? Have you ever been to Treviso? And if not: would you now consider doing so? Just let me know in the comments.
, and I loved your last minute no organization spirit. Ermes of course I do have a selfie with the famous fountain delle Tette although we didn’t get any wine from them 
