Coffee with Marina and her mom, Lina in the morning in the small, funky, apartment and then a 10 minute walk to the train station where we found that there was another strike going on and our train to Venice had been cancelled. Luckily, the high speed train train to Venice was not cancelled, yet it was totally booked, so we had to pay an extra 18 euro per person to stand the entire way to Venice. Love these strikes...I think that they are self-imposed holidays!
Venice. We almost pooped our skirts when we walked out of the station and saw the view! But no time to look because our host at the Air B&B we had requested, had cancelled our request. We were homeless in Venice. We did the next best thing, we found a food establishment with wifi and ate Kabobs, fries, and drank a coke and booked a hostel. Now to find it.
Venice is one tough city to manuver and it took us 45 minutes to get to our Hostel. We climbed up some dirty, red-carpeted winding steps and arrived at a front desk...sort of. It was actually a desk with a computer and we were shown our room which was directly in front of the front desk. It was a small room with a sink and a very unsafe balcony...no fire codes here in Venice! We were told that we would be moved tomorrow because this room was booked, but we would have our own bathroom. Didn't really care...we were here to see Venice!
We tried to see Venice...it was so unbelievably crowded that getting around was difficult. Walking from the train station to our hostel, we had passed beautiful, uncrowded streets, but now we were at ground zero...St. Mark's Square! We listened to beautiful music played by talented musicians at the restaurants and then wandered away from that area and found a cute little bar and each got an Aperol Spritzer, which is turning out to be our favorite. We asked the bartender for a restaurant that she would go to and she pointed us in the direction of a local restaurant around the corner. Sitting next to us at the bar was an Australian couple who decided to go as well. They left about five minutes before us and when we went to be seated at the restaurant, they asked if we would sit next to them. Why not, mate?!
We spent the next hour and a half talking with Ann and Graham Cunningham from Melbourne, Austrailia about biking (he is an avid road biker and was going to bike in Italy), art (Ann is an artist and made their beach cottage her studio), children, Italy, and life. These were well-traveled people who retired well. They bought a bottle of very good Tuscan wine and we all enjoyed it. They agreed we could put them in our blog. I would love to visit one day with them again. Ann said that she liked my spirit and even though what I was going through was difficult, I had a strong spirit.
We left there and walked along the canal and stopped like tourists do and had a $6 cappuccino...which was the worst cappuccino I'd had so far. Back to our tiny abode and to sleep. We said goodnight to the night desk person and stepped two feet into our room....certainly not the Marriott, but one of the pricest place we've slept! This was the first place we'd stayed that had no towels so we used our headbands (thanks to Kathy Langr) to dry ourselves...whatever works. The shower was a little creepy, but we needed to wash the hot day from our bodies. Venice had been hot as hell!
Tip of the day: Tie a scarf to your purse to cover your shoulders when you enter churches.
Ciao,
The Traveling Women
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