Day 24 - Trapped In Venice, May 6th

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The Fine Art Of Getting Lost ...

This morning we got up at 8am, fully intending to use our 24 hour "Orange Pass" to get into the Correr Museum before 9:30am. 9:30am found us lost in the maze of alleyways. At 10:00am, I geve up trying to navigate and grabbed the map, thumbing it like an orienteer and got us navigated to the Correr Museum. We spent 2 hours touring the Correr, Hobbit's eyes aglaze in admiration at my knowledge of Venetian history, culture and influence on Renaissance Art. It's amazing the amount of useful information one can glean from reading 3 different travel guides ...
After the Correr, we went on the "Rick Steves St. Mark's to Rialto Bridge Self-Guided Walk." En-route we stopped at a wine bar and got lunch from their food bar - essentially the Venetian equivalent of Dim Sum ($3 per plate of Venetian/Italian food.)
We got coffee further along in our trek, and now we're waiting out the heat of the day in an Internet Cafe, preparatory to a visit to the Doge's Palace around 5pm, dinner around 7pm, then a slow promenade through town to the train station where we're catching the midnight train to Naples.

We Saw Some Nice Buildings While We Were Lost

Police Day

When we go to St. Mark's Squaree, we noticed a crowd and a bunch of police officers. As it turns out, May 6th is Police Day. There's a mass at St. Marks and they have representatives from all the police agencies in formation outside St. Mark's.

Formation Of Representatives

Special Units - Helicopter Pilots, Divers ...

Police Divers

Several observers opined that they would be tempted to throw themselves into a canal if they knew that they would be rescued by these Italian Police rescue divers.

Liquor, Beer and Wine

Hobbit writes: Wendell has been doing a great job of getting the local whatever. In Prague it's Budweiser. Not the swill you get in the states, the real Budweiser. It was actually pretty good for beer. And of course in Vienna we were able to once again drink good coffee. Wendell has been going nuts getting good cigars for himself.
We got to Venice only to discover that there was a planned train strike right through when we were supposed to leave. No worries, with some quick planning Wendell booked us a nice room and reserved a cabin for two on the train the following night. So we have an extra day in Venice and one less in Rome. Six of one, half a dozen of the other.
Accommodations in Venice can be amazingly affordable if you go off of the grand canal. This is because there is an odor in Venice that breezes down the canal waft away. If you are not on the canal it's a little stinky. It wasn't too bad but could explain why we got such a nice room for such a little amount of money.
I have read about the smell of Venice, I have also heard about the sound of Venice. There are no motorized vehicles in the city except the occasional motorboat. There is only walking (no bicycles) and talking. The buildings are really tall and very close together. So the sound is different. It's muted talking and footsteps. The grand canal sounds like any public waterway minus the seagulls.
I'm so hopped up on a café latte right now I can barely write. Boy this Venetian coffee is good.
Our hotel room overlooks one of the smaller waterways but it seems to be on the main gondola route because as evening draws nigh one gondola after another passes by. Sometimes they are singing. It's hysterical. Our windowsill is wide enough to sit in and watch them go by.
God bless Wendell for being a food geek. No matter where we are he knows what's on the menu. He's getting me some incredible meals. We went out to dinner tonight and had: San Pellegrino, house red wine, Shrimp with polenta, (best grits I've ever had), risotto with marinara, grilled bass, green salad and chocolates. It sounds simple but boy was it good.
Drop Wendell on any bridge in Venice and he'll make seven new friends. Tonight it was seven ladies from Cornwall.
Day two in Venice we went to see the Doges Palace. I think palaces are a little boring. I like castles much better.

Wendell, Hobbit And The Women From Cornwall

Wendell Checks The Map For Directions To The Train Station

Hobbit Asks, "Is Ferrovia The Italian Word For Train Station?"

Night Train Out Of Venice

Wendell has, I think, sent out the info about Paris Hilton on the train? I think she had been drinking. Wendell and I were both pretty amused. especially to imagine her royal highness trying to manage in Rome. I wasn't so amused when we were told by our cabin steward that we should not leave our cabin at all during the night because it was that unsafe on the train. For this purpose they have provided a bucket think that you pee in and it sort of dumps out on the ground. Yuck. The ground part. Actually having a chamber pot in the cabin was nice so I didn't have to leave the cabin during the night.
Alas our start to Naples was not going so great thanks to Paris and the rude unhelpful conductors on the train. (Not the first class one, he was nice).

Railroad Strike Endeth Tonight

At the end of our last report, the railroad strike was ending at 9pm and we had reservations to depart at Midnight. Please excuse my typing, I am writing this using a keyboard that 'fell off the back of a truck' - we have discovered that almost everything in Naples is available for purchase from the trunk of someone's automobile.
But I digress ... after touring the Doge's palace (including a trip across the interior of the bridge of sighs) we collected our baggage at the hotel and embarked on a cross-town hike. Walking in Venice is entertaining and fraught with peril - with nose buried in a map or looking up at the street names, it's quite possible to walk off the end of a sidewalk into a canal.
We made it to the train station with 2 hours to spare, so we paid 5 Euros and took the Vaporetto #1 down to St. Marks and back - the same trip that tourists pay 50 Euros each to do, minus the bad jokes and misinformation.
We arrived back at the train station with about 20 minutes to spare. I checked the reader board and our train had not yet been assigned a track - this is a bad sign, the equivalent of checking the departure board at the airport 20 minutes prior to your flight departing to discover that the gate isn't yet assigned.
The reader board updated 12 minutes before departure time and people flocked to the track siding like pigeons heading to St. Mark's Square at the sound of 20 pounds of birdseed hitting the marble.
After 3 weeks we were in tune with local customs, 'When in Rome, er, Venice ...' so we got on the train. A few moments after we boarded, I heard a young woman yelling in a tone of voice that could best be described as, 'Outraged Sorority Princess,' "That bitch cut in front of me! I can't believe that she pushed me out of her way!"
We worked our way down the corridor to the accompaniment of her running diatribe, railing against the injustice, her oppression at the hands of an uncaring world, her displeasure at her perception of Hobbit's hostility and her conjecture as to Hobbit's nationality and sexual orientation.
Since we were saying, "Scuzi, Prego, Scuzi, Prego" as we worked our way down the passageway, I'm convinced that she thought that we didnàt speak English (otherwise, I suspect that she probably would not have been quite as vociferous.)
I chuckled to myself, thinking that if she got that upset at a little jostling in a line to get on the train, she was doomed to spend the remainder of her European vacation in the Valium and Prozac ward after 3 hours in Rome.
I've got a big wad of notes about our adventures in the first class car - I'll leave them to when I've got a fast machine and good connection.
We arrived in Naples this morning and we hiked the 1km from the train station to our hostel (we have a room on 5th floor with a view of the harbor.) Half of our walk was on sidewalks crowded with street vendors selling all manner of counterfeit and/or stolen merchandise - $10 Rolex watches, $15 laptop computers, $10 Nike shoes, etc. The population could, without any culling or wardrobe change, be used as extras for any episode of the Sopranos or most Martin Scorcese movies.
One last bit of slagging my countrymen - en-route to Herculaneum today, we encountered an American couple who were en-route to Sorrento from Rome. They described their experience in Naples as horrible - it's dirty, the people are rude and pushy and the pickpockets swarm like flies ... a few minutes later they revealed that they had merely transferred trains and had not actually left the train station.
I have girded my loins and done brave-stupid things in my life - tomight marked another milestone. I crossed the street in 4 lanes of Naples rush hour traffic and lived to tell the tale.

Photo From Vaporetto Night Tour of Venice

Rialto Bridge From Vaporetto Night Tour of Venice

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