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Leaving Rome
On the way out of Rome we decided to leave early for the train station so that we could check out the Museo Romano (Roman Museum) about a block from the terminal. It was a disappointment, most of the collection was of pieces of columns and other stone fragments. The historic collection at the Vatican is hard to beat. By the way the cab ride to the Terminal was 10 euros.
Riding to Venice
We hopped on the train to Venice and settled in for our 4 hour tour. We spent the time enjoying the country side and some wine. We arrived in Venice well lubricated and ready for our water taxi ride to our hotel. This puts us with almost every form of transportation to get around on this trip; planes, trains, busses and now boats.
What a cool way to come into a city, cruising to your hotel in a boat. The cruise mind you was about 30 minutes. We didn’t realize how secluded our hotel was until we crossed the large canal that separated our hotel from the Venice. This means later that we have to take a water taxi if we want
to go anywhere. We stayed at the Hilton Stucky.
We met up with the other two couples at the hotel and headed off for dinner. Scott had made reservations for us at a little restaurant called Vini da Gigio, in the northeast of Venice. Cute little place and the food was excellent. We started out with an anti pasta tray of fresh fish and it was fresh almost sashimi style. The rest of the dinner was pasta and fish and fried anchovies with a signature squid ink pasta. The signature dish received mixed reviews from the group, 50% liked it and 50% did not. And we can’t forget the wine, about 10 bottles of wine for dinner. Wine is like water here and priced very reasonably.
Getting back to the hotel
Something that we didn’t consider, was that it might be difficult to get a water taxi back to the hotel late at night and we all had first night syndrome being together. So after dinner we hit a couple bars in the square by the restaurant and decided we had had enough at about 2am. Ok under normal circumstances we would hail a taxi and head
back to the hotel, not in Venice. Where we were there were no water taxis to be found. We were told to head to San Marcos square to catch a water taxi there. We should have gotten the first clue when a local points in a general direction and says ‘that way’ that we should start to worry. As I review the map now we were about 1/3-1/2 mile from San Marco. It was like a twilight episode and we were the human mice in a maze. Narrow streets, dead-end streets, dim lighting, bridges and asking the scarce locals how to find San Marco only took us an hour!
At the ‘dock’ there is only one water taxi. Economics of supply and demand resulted in 100 euros to get across the water. Someone in the party made a comment on how outrageous the price was and the comment back from the driver was, “then you can walk.” Reality that we either sleep in the square or pay the Euros.
As we got into our hotel the sky opened up and unleashed a downpour. Wise choice of not sleeping in the square.
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