Venezia

Venice, still Italian but very different than Rome. Fascinating the way life is conducted without roads with the morning commute looking much like us but with boats jamming the Grand Canal. Venice's water buses (vaporetti)and water taxis carrying people to work and kids to school; other boats tranporting food supplies, furniture, trash, and construction materials; and special construction equipped boats.

Venice is simply a beautiful place, the building architecture, the canals, the narrow walks (maybe five feet wide) lined with shops and restaurants, bridges, and, of course, the gondolas. Losing yourself in the back walkways is an adventure ... and just plain fun, when you finally find your way back to your hotel. From Rome we learned to look for the street names on the building corners (if you can find one).



We stayed at the Hotel Becher close to St. Mark's Square (maybe a three minute walk) after you find it the first time. The hotel is very elegant with a canal platform/dock with tables and chairs for watching the parade of gondolas pass by and for being picked up for your gondola ride.



Impressions ... after arriving at the St. Lucia train station, we caught a vaporetta to take us to our hotel. The trip takes about 25 minutes (if you catch the fast bus ... fewer stops). Each turn on the Grand Canal brings different sights and sounds ... truly amazing sights to digest in such a short trip. We got off the vaporetti at St. Mark's Square and walked through the square attempting to find the information center, to get a map to our hotel. After walking to the two locations that Rick Steve's book showed, we gave up and starting walking in the direction we thought the hotel was located ... and then stumbled across the relocated information center (something to write Rick Steves).

We spent most of our time just adventuring around Venice, eating, looking at the variety of stores (it seems Italians really like their shoes and purses ... and in Venice, carnavale masks) ... and of course in the early evening a gondola ride. The rides are expensive ... but worth every euro. Our gondoleer never stopped talking over the one hour ride and seem to know everyone along the canals.



The next day we were off to Wengen, Switzerland ... and our challenge of making five train connections, so we knew that we'd better be on time for the trains (trains are extremely punctual ... and absolutely leave at the scheduled departure times). We needed to get an early start to catch a vaporetta to get us safely in time at the train station by 7:50 a.m. So figured for a 25 minute vaporetta ride to catch a boat by at least 7:15 a.m. Here's the rub, the express vaporetta is the #2 line ... you don't want to take the #1 line, which takes at least 45 minutes (stops at every bus stop). Well, no one told us that the #2 didn't run until 8:00 a.m. in the morning. We left by 7:10 ... and arrived at the train station at 7:55. The train had left ... we looked at each other and then looked at the empty train tracks ... and thinking now what, since we have multiple connections to get to Wengen.

Our adventure continues ...