Our saga continues as we board the train for the last leg of our journey this trip. We are bound for Venice. I will miss the Alps, but I am looking forward to new experiences. I have already forgotten the little Italian I knew and find I am mixing up my languages. The German Danke comes to mind instead of Grazie, for thank-you. The dining car is nice but very expensive. We have brought a few things to snack on, but go to the dining car for a change of pace. Announcements are made in 3 languages, letting us know where the dining car is. The train stops for about 10 minutes at many small villages on our route. Unfortunately all we can see at the stops is the station, and they all look alike, and too similar to home. While the train is in the open though the sights are different and I can see the landscape changing. There are vinyards planted everywhere as we get closer to Italy.
This time I do not meet anyone that speaks English, it amazes how well we communicate. One time as two people left my compartment they gave me a thumbs up sign, we had traveled together companionably for about an hour, without a word being spoken. I wrote my impressions in a journal, our eyes met once in awhile, we smiled and went back to our individual pursuits.
Finally we came to Venice, and are met at the train by Luca. He says it is only 100 meters or so to our apartment. We will soon get used to everything being about 100 meters from anything else. This 100 meters took us up bridges, down bridges and alongside several canals. Finally we reach our destination, only 3 flights up to go, no elevator. The apartment rented to us by Luca, is surprisingly spacious. I was unsure of dragging so many suitcases up those stairs, but as in many things the difficult sometimes has extra benefits. The view was wonderful. Our apartment could have slept 6 comfortably, but for the 4 of us gave us some elbow room. We had our own roof patio with a wonderful view of that part of Venice. We had 3 rooms, a kitchen and a bathroom for approximately 650 Euros for 8 days. currency converter There are several sites on the web offering European apartments for rent for short or long term stays. We had looked at several. Two that we liked the best was venice rents, and luca can be reached by email, his is the apartment we booked. Luca email here. Prices varied from 600 Euros a week to 2000 Euros. My sister took charge here and got the apartment for us.
Our first full day in Venice we take a self-guided walking tour from a guidebook. That is slow going and I want to get on with it and look at all of the sights. There are little niches with bas reliefs or sometimes small sculpture of a saint in niches on many walls. The age of everything is awesome. There is restoration work going on in many places. Venice is sinking at about an inch a year. You will see from some of my pictures, that at high tide some of the walk ways (streets/sidewalks) are under water. We see workmen putting low tables in the middle of the walkways for people to stay out of the water. The tables are about 2 feet above ground. There is also a project on the outer islands for holding back some of the sea. I hope this works for to lose Venice would be a great loss for mankind. Venice is a very unique city.
Our first serious excursion into Venice was by Vaporetto (water bus). We decided to buy a week's ticket for about 27 Euro. A single trip ticket was about 2-3 Euro. We road up and back down the Grand Canal. Later this proved to have saved us quite a sum, since we were riding them everywhere, to San Marco, and Lido, or just around the block. Water bus or Taxi stands were every few hundred meters. A taxi, usually a speed boat runs from 50 Euro to 75 Euro. We got caught in one rain storm and shared one back to our neighborhood with two other couples. This was how we planned to go to the airport on our way home too. (faster but a lot more expensive)
I hope I have given you some ideas here if you are planning such a vacation as this. Clicking on the following pictures will give you a larger view, and holding your cursor over a thumbnail a brief description.
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