05-04 All Day Trains to Venice

Today could be relaxing since we will be sitting on trains all day. However, my train intuition has been terrible in Europe. So, we shall see. Our hotel shuttle took about 8 of us directly to the train station. We bought our tickets on what looks like the oldest train in Italy for the 50 minute trip to Naples. The train eventually becomes packed with workers heading to Naples.

Our 45 minute layover for the Naples to Rome train turns into 4 hours because the train is canceled. We find a place near an upstairs cafe to relax and guard our luggage. We end up eating McDonald's for lunch and trying to write our stories about our travels in Europe.

We have reservations on this 2 hour ride and we both have window seats and power for the laptop.

Soon we are racing through the Italian countryside once again heading north to Venice. We arrive on time and we are so excited to BE IN VENICE.

We purchase a 7 day ride-any-boat-at-anytime pass for $50e each and the break-even point is 7 rides. We'll do more than that because this is our first time here and we want to see everything. This is our main mode of transportation on the water. It is called a vaporetto.

We get off the vaporetto at the Rialto Bridge stop on Line 2 and since I meticulously wrote turn by turn instructions to get to our hotel we do NOT get lost (this time) and we walk right to it.

Down this narrow "street" is a famous landmark that tour groups stop at during all hours of the day...and our hotel.

We unpack our bags and then head out to start our exploration of Venice. Somehow we stumble upon a cafe serving great tasting food - I have tortellini and she has a ham pizza. The service is a bit slow. The waiter has the attitude that he'll serve you when HE'S ready. A couple sits down close by and eventually they ask us if they have to get up to order the food. I told them to look disinterested in getting their food and the waiter would eventually stop by.

We go into a few stores on our way to St. Mark's Square and when we find it Karen is disappointed in the view. She thought we should have entered from the other direction.

This was the classic view that she preferred.

We "wondered" (my term for wandering and wondering at Venice) around until dark and found another way back to our hotel. Whenever possible I would find a different route to get us somewhere so that we could explore as many of the streets of Venice as possible.