OH NO! OUR SUMMER IS HALF OVER ! :(
And we've hardly done anything!
Oh wait...
That's not entirely accurate...
So I woke up really early and went for a walk through La Spezia Italy to get fresh croissants and fruit for breakfast before we headed to Venice.
Yeah maybe our summer is going too quickly but it is certainly far from boring... :)
We packed everything up and showered and out the door by 930. We walked a whopping 5 blocks to the train and got on early. We were the only passengers on the train as everyone was standing outside wary of whether it was the correct train. It would be just our luck to go the wrong way... :)
All was well as we did a quick email/Facebook check and carried on. The train left promptly at 1015 and we were on Milk Run #1 through 12 stops to Parma. We change trains there and head to Bologna. Then we get on a fast train and rocket to Venice!
Riding the train affords you quite a few luxuries.
First and foremost, there's no navigation required. In a foreign country, this is a huge bonus. No getting lost, no asking for directions, no car accidents or near misses. This is a really big deal.
Secondly, you actually get to look at stuff. If the train isn't going 150 km/hr you can see thousands of things. It's not like a cruise or a flight where you see pretty much the same view most of the time. ( except for those dratted tunnels that take forever to come out of) Every few seconds is another snapshot in time in your mind of a place you've seen and something you've done.
The train piddled along over hill and over dale until we arrived at our 12th and final stop on a regions train in Parma..this was a rather large station and we were able to grab a couple pieces of pizza before jumping on the next train.
This train had some guts! No sooner did we get seated, we were soaking down the rails at 150km/hr. We had to shoo an old Asian man out of our seats and got settled. We had what appeared to be am Italian single mom with two girls aged 7 and 2.
As we played card games, the 7 yeast old girl was fascinated with what we were doing. When Krista went to the washroom I did the only card trick I knew for her and Jacob and blew their minds! It would be so much nicer to know the language as I have a million questions about everything while I'm here and so few people speak English.
We arrived in Bologna lickedty split and once again departed the train into high heat and humidity and the least popular thing of all in Italy - Smokers!
It's borderline torture dealing with all the second hand smoke combined with the heat and humidity. It's just a giant punch in the throat every time you go past more than one person in a group puffing away. I have gotten so completely intolerant of it (now that ive been so blessed in Canada with hardly anyone smoking anywhere that I spend time in.)
For all you smokers out there - Italy is for you. Smoke anywhere anytime day or night.
We waited 20 minutes for our next train and at least a good strong breeze kept us from melting. I understand now why so many of our friends have done Italy in the fall with the leaves changing colors and the temp in the teens and low 20s and not this 30+ stuff. Phew.
The next train arrived and we were blown away. The seats were immaculate. It had chargers for everyone. It had its own dining car for goodness sake. It went mach 2 and my absolute favorite thing was when you approached the sliding doors to go between cars, they opened automatically to the sounds of doors from Star Trek. SERIOUSLY! ! My phone was dead and I couldn't get a video of it but I must have went in and out the doors at least 20 times driving people crazy but it was AWESOME! !!!
We arrived in Venice way too quickly for my liking (I was still going in and out of the doors actually! )
Suddenly we were surrounded by water everywhere! CRAZY! And boats!! Every shape and size going in every direction honking horns and barely missing one another it was like rush hour!
We needed to find our hotel as everyone was fading a bit and a storm. We looked into boat taxi options but they were crazy money so I made everyone suck it up and hike with our gargantuan backpacks on.
Now you have 2 options here. Stay on the main drag and walk around the island or cut across the island. Around looked way further so I decided we would cut across. I mean how hard could this be? We walked up and over a bridge and went a block, made 2 turns and ended up at a dead end. This was not going to be as easy as I thought...
We made our way East winding threw the streets up and down stairs and over 50 bridges before finding the general area of where our hotel was. We asked 10 shop workers and not one had the foggiest idea where the place was. We were using Google maps offline but I knew we were damn close. There was the tiniest sign inside the tiniest alley pointing to a word that partially resembled the name of our hotel. Oh boy. This was not going to work out well...
We wandered down and into quite a nice lobby where we got our keys and walked another 50m down what resembled Diagon Alley to locate yet another building and climbed 3 flights of stairs to discover our room.
Phew!
And the AC was on! It was cold and we all dumped our backpacks and collapsed...
After half an hour, we grabbed some water and struck out for the local area to get our bearings. Wow it is so easy to get turned around and lost in this place. Super tall buildings with super narrow alleys - bridges and stairs everywhere - and dead ends all over the place ! For example - our conversation might go something like this..
"Let's follow these people - they seem to know where they're going."
Dead End.
"Nope they don't! !!"
But we toured around St Mark's square and Basilica. We saw a couple pickpockets fail miserably. One got beat up by a really tough Italian guy and the other got arrested.
We wandered past hundreds of Gondoliers and the price was $80 Euro pp for 30 minutes. OUCH! After dark it increased to 100! Double ouch!
We would go for a ride just the two of us after the boys had supper.
We found a Chinese food place and ordered some soup, beef, rice, chicken and spring rolls to bring us back from the dead. We bought a huge biscotti cookie for dessert. Yum!
We made our way to the Grand Canal and more Gondoliers. These guys wanted only 100 Euro for a boat full of 6 people.
I found an Asian girl and her fiance and the 6 of us climbed into a boat. HOORAY! Now we're talking!
We paddled out into serious traffic and then after a while we turned back into the city. We made our way around 30 blocks stopping at some of the historic sights and scenes from movies that Michael the Gondolier could remember.
Our friends we met - Darren and Ada from Toronto - were recently married and on their honeymoon cruising from Barcelona to Italy and back.
45 minutes later we returned to the ocean and parked. We hopped out and carried on sight seeing throughout the city. We found many touristy places and would come back to a few of them tomorrow. We spotted a grocery store and picked up some fruit and snacks for breakfast. We walked through the night back to our hotel room but every street and store front was lit up like Vegas. What great atmosphere. If only our feet and knees weren't destroyed from hiking for 9 days straight.
We eventually made it back to our place after shopping at a few places. The WiFi worked for the apple phones but not the Samsungs so we will have to make do. A great first day with 2 more to go in this unique city!
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