Day 23 - Venice, Anyone?
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Trapped In Venice - There Are Worse Places To Be Trapped Overnight
We arrived yesterday and tried to make our train reservations to
Naples, only to be informed that, while they'd be glad to take our
money, we wouldn't actually be able to travel on the night train to
Naples that evening because there was a railroad worker's strike
scheduled for 9pm, 5 May to 9pm, 6 May.
So we were stuck in Venice (there are worse places to be stuck, for
example, a bus stop near the top of St. Bernard pass for 2+ hours in
40 degree temperature, 15 mph winds and occasional blasts of freezing
drizzle, but I digress ...)
We went to the Tourist Information Office and asked about hotels.
Take note, the TI offices (especially at train stations) tout only the
hotels that pay them, and only the expensive hotels are willing to pay
that much.
Somehow we got lucky - an expensive hotel had a couple of 60 Euro
rooms (bath down the hall) to rent out that were available that
evening. We grabbed a 2.50 Euro Map, then headed off to the hotel to
dump the bags.
For 60 Euros in Venice, I was expecting a hotel sandwiched between the
nuclear waste storage facility and the abbatoir and my kidneys would
awaken in the bathtub pinned to a note explaining that the remainder
of my body had been organ-legged.
We arrived to find that Hotel Canova was quiet and a very good value.
Hobbit And The Swan
When we opened the door to our room, we discovered that the maid had folded our towels into the shape of a swan.
Hobbit oohed and aawed and said, "I miss our geese."
Hobbit Pets The Towel
Welcome to Venice
Most people think of gondolas when they think of Venitian transportation.
Gondolas in Venice
Real Venetian Vehicles
In the foreground, left, you can see a Vaporetto, a Venetian Taxi.
Vaporettos come in a variety of sizes and configurations, from taxi to pickup truck. Guess what the blue one on the right is?
Venetian Hearse
You can see the driver up front, the casket and flowers in the middle and the passenger area in the back.
Touring Venice
After checking in to our hotel, we headed out and explored the town. We visited St. Mark's Square, I
explained a multitude of trivia about history and architecture to
Hobbit (her eyes glazing over in awe at my mastery, knowledge and
prowess ...)
After our St Marks sightseeing, we hopped aboard a Vaporetto and
toured the Grand Canal. I read from the Rick Steves guidebook,
explaining all the sights that we were seeing. At the culmination of
our Vaporetto tour, Hobbit announced that she was STARVING and we went
back to our hotel and I assembled a picnic lunch from ingredients that
we had purchased. After our lunch, we decided to partake of the
Venetian custom of a siesta.
Around 5pm, I discovered one minor fault with our hotel.
St Marks Square is near the hotel, and one of the major gondola docks
is right outside the Doge's Palace. After touring St. Mark's,
exhausted tourists drop 70 Euros for a one hour "romantic gondola
ride." ALL the Gondoliers take an identical route through the small,
mini and micro canals near St. Marks, returning to St. Marks to pick
up more customers at the end of the hour.
Which explains why a seemingly endless procession of gondoliers
paddled underneath our window, at 90 second intervals, all singing to
their clients.
After about 15 minutes, I grumbled that I was going to go to the
(apparently abandoned) construction site outside our hotel. Workers
had embarked on a reorganization of the cobblestones in the sidewalk,
leaving behind piles of sand and cobblestones. I was entertaining
revenge fantasies of lugging a half-dozen large cobblestones up to our
hotel room and then depth-charging them down into the center of the
next gondola to paddle underneath our window, hopefully sparing the
neighborhood its umpteenth rendition of, "O Solo Mio."
I decided that rummaging around in my bag for earplugs would be a more
efficient use of my time. An unfortunate side-effect of the earplugs
was that I didn't hear my watch alarm and we slept until nearly 6pm,
too late to go visit the Correr museum or the Doge's Palace.
Instead we got up, visited the Internet cafe, rescheduled our
reservations for Pompeii/Herculaneum and Rome, then headed out to
dinner. 3 hours and 90 Euros later, we waddled into St. Mark's Square
to observe the diners who were paying REALLY big prices for dinner and
listen to the duelling orchestras serenading the diners. From the
center of the square, it was a cacaphonous mashup of classical music.
We did a promenade, then tried to head back to our hotel. Being a
couple of lightweights, one bottle of wine sufficed to boggle our
brains, so we spent nearly a half-hour negotiating the maze of
alleyways back to our hotel.
Hobbit And The Lion Next To Saint Mark's
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