From Riomaggiore to Venice - August 7, 2010

Saturday August 7, 2010

Senne's Summary: We take four trains and a vaporetto to Venice. We get lost, eat pizza and admire a lot of sparkly things.

This morning we headed out pretty early to start our "four train ride" day. Our trip was pretty uneventful, as we have now figured out most of the little train tricks… except one.

On our third train between Parma and Bologna our reserved seats were in car 10. They don’t tell you where car 10 is going to end up on the track, and we were waiting at the wrong end. (The numbering system is in one direction sometimes, and the other direction other times. I haven’t figured out that system yet 🤷) So when the train arrived and we realized we were at the wrong end, we ran as fast as I could with a giant backpack on. I started to worry the train would leave without us, so we got on in car six (thinking we could just walk through the cars). Ha ha ha ha ha! The aisles of the cars were packed with people and very narrow… and we weren’t skinny with a backpack on our front and back. We made it to car 9… realized there was only about 20 minutes left in the train ride and just decided to wait by a door so we could get off at our stop and not get stuck in an aisle. Nevertheless, we made it to Venice all in one piece :)

When we arrived in Venice we bought our waterbus tickets and headed to our bed and breakfast. We were both very excited to see that stop #2 was S. Marta! Apparently, they’ve named a stop after Steve… who knew?! Steve took a picture of his stop just so you’d all know we weren’t making that up!

Photographic evidence!

We get to our stop, meet our host Lorenzo and he takes us through the maze to his bed and breakfast “Ai Tagliapietra”, which I highly recommend if you are ever in Venice! We put our stuff away, get organized and then head out to look for some food.

We wandered the streets a bit, walked around St. Mark Square, had an ice cream, saw a restaurant where you can pay 8.50 Euros for a Cola, and looked in lots of shop windows.

Venice surprised us both… maybe it’s just because we’ve been in small towns for a few weeks… but it has so much 'stuff’! There were a dizzying amounts of restaurants, shops and sparkles. Seriously, anything that could sparkle in this city does… you can buy sparkly jewels, shoes, hair clips, hats, tiaras, masks, pens, lighters… and the list goes on.

We saw many restaurants that seemed to basically have the same menu… we decided we weren’t really dressed for dinner (shorts and t-shirts) so picked up a pizza, some diet coke, and a double chocolate meringue!!!! Now my sadness about missing the meringues in Nice has been satisfied!

We did get a little lost in our wandering, but figured out that as long as we can find San Marco we should be able to find our place… we’re pretty close to the square. Luckily, Steve managed to get us back to our place. I’m lucky to have him… I’d still be wandering the streets without him… even when we were right in front of the B&B I didn’t see it! (In my defense there is no sign.)