Venice
We caught another train from Florence this morning to Venice for an 8 hour layover before the night train to Paris. It was a smooth trip and all went well and arrived on time in Venice. First joy was leaving 4 bags of luggage in storage for the 8 hours and with the 20 kg limit things were looking a little dire but for once the Italian service guy simply gave us a knowing smile. Then out into the masses on a rather warm and humid day. First impressions were not good. It seemed dirty and over crowded. We had organised tickets for the Vaporetta Dell’arte but of course first had to line up to actually redeem the tickets for online reservation. We then lined up with the tourists and wondered why we had paid €25 each to be jammed into a boat that would,look fine shipping live cattle to the abattoirs. It was a slow boat but not to China – we mad every stop along the way until we hit San Marco – and then it got really crowded. It was impressive though and we then used our iPad rather well with the GPS to find a recommended little restaurant down a few back alleys and across a few bridges. It was the Veccio Fritolin and it was a superb seafood place with simply the friendliest waiter we had seen in all of Italy. From there the day improved considerably. A little bit of souvenir purchasing before some investigation into the 2 levels of Vaporetta that operate on the Grand Canal – cattle class and the actual Dell’Arte that we had paid for but only stop s at some points and is much more relaxing on board.,we hopped on this one at last and simply went up and down the canal over the next 90 minutes as the sun started to set. Beautiful. Then we hopped off near the train station for one last beer and watched as the sun set and the lightest started to shine
We had no dramas getting our luggage back and when our platform was no,inmates 30 minutes before departure we thought we had it made. Then the shit hit the fan. Our carriage we were sent to was not configured for first class – you can stay here sir but we would rather move you to a first class carriage. Shit yeah Signora. Well fark me I would hate to see second class on Thello because first was a dive. No private washroom or even a bench to eat at. Bunk beds and a bottle of water was about it. You simply folded out your bed and lay there hoping like hell the next 13 hours went by in a blur.
It didn’t
flashman181 