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After getting up this morning we did our final repacking - moving single books from suitcase to suitcase to get the bags all under the 20 kg limit. After a quick final garbage run to the bins on the corner, we took one final bike ride over to Giovanin and Pia's for coffee. Giuditta and Luigi, who are going to be driving us to Venice, had got up even earlier this morning so that they could be finished milking the cows and the morning work for 10. At 10 we said our final goodbye to Giovanin and Pia before returning to the house to pick up our suitcases.
The snow capped mountains seemed even closer this morning as we drove the side roads towards Codroipo. We passed the fireworks factory that had blown up last week, but there was no real sign of the explosion that had broken windows kilometers away. After moving onto the the toll highway, we made it to Venice airport very quickly.
Despite being a fairly large size facility, the Venice airport seemed to have fairly relaxed parking rules, unlike some places where getting out of your car in the drop off area risks having
it towed immediately. We ended up being there much earlier than our check in and so had time to spend watching chatting and watching the planes with Luigi and Giuditta. We can't thank them and the whole family enough for their hospitality over the last month. We have had a relaxing and fun time and seen far more than we had planned for. It was hard to say goodbye knowing how long it may be before we all see each other again.
After seeing Luigi and Giuditta off, we bought pizza slices lunch (one final taste of real Italian pizza) and then lined up for our check in. As it worked out, the airline would let you carry any weight in carry on, but we have found it better safe than sorry with ever changing rules.
The Venice airport is nice, though nothing special, and we were quickly through security and into the duty free area. We are flying Easy Jet, so we are not quite sure what to expect as they are a discount airline. Seats are not reserved, though they do assign you a boarding group depending when you check in. A short bus ride from
the terminal building took us to the airplane, and despite the scramble of people, we still managed to get three seat together and one behind.
As we took off, you could really appreciate that Venice is really a delta area made up of a sea of canals and small islands. Some of these islands were merely sandbars, while others had whole miniature farms in a tight compact form. The city itself was interesting to see from this angle, though with the speed of the plane it quickly disappeared into the distance.
Easy Jet turned out to be adequate, though just a no frills as you might expect and you had to pay for anything, even a bottle of water, aboard. With such a short flight, we had barely finished taking in Venice when we were into the snow capped mountains of the Alps, and shortly after that, beginning our decent. As we got closer to landing, the quilt work of fields below us came into view.
Once on the ground, we pulled up relatively close to the terminal and had only a short walk to Lyon's airport tent like buildings. It is really an unusual looking structure,
somewhere between a temporary tent and a permanent building in the arrivals area, though the rest of the airport echoes this design in a more permanant way.
It never ceasing to amaze me how four bags that are checked at exactly the same time can come off an airplane in such a random order. We got three bags quite quickly, but had a longer wait for the last one.
Once out of the baggage claim area, we ran into Evy's friend Catherine (Tsetse) almost immediately, certainly a far easier rendezvous than I was expecting.
Tsetse had managed to score a prime parking spot and we were loaded into her passenger van and ready to go minutes after coming our of the terminal. Between the airport drop off in Venice and Tsetse picking us up, it has been by far the easiest change in countries yet.
From the airport, we were quickly on the highway leading from Lyon to Grenoble. On the way, we called the lady that we are renting the apartment from and Tseste arranged to meet her husband near the Prefecture from where he would direct us the last bit to the apartment.
Grenoble seems to have a strange mix of old and new parts, with almost a solid dividing line between them. It was a site for some of the winter Olympic games back in 1968 so it has some buildings left over from that era, though most of the downtown old with narrow streets. A river flow though the town, with high cliffs rising on one bank. A cable car, one of the oldest in Europe, runs from one side of this river up to the Bastille, which stands at the top of the cliffs.
We met up with our contact at the Prefecture and drove the short distance further to the location of the apartment. A small courtyard leads to the door for the apartments. From here, a very dingy and smelly wooden spiral staircase (with a thick rope to hang onto) leads to the actual unit, which is on the second floor. At first, this didn't look promising at all and I was thinking “what have we done”. Once through the door though, the place was quite nice, bright, and clean and bigger than I had imagined it would be. It is rather oddly decorated with cherubs and
feathery things occupying nearly every shelf, but seemed good enough and certainly was right downtown and central. It also had a large sun room and an even larger terrace off that.
The woman who we had been in contact with was at the apartment when we got there and we were able to get final details from her, including hooking up an antenna to get wifi internet. She did ask for a cheque as a security deposit (something which we did not have) but fortunately Tsetse was able to help us out there. Tsetse had also kindly brought us some food to get us started.
After saying goodbye to both our landlord and Tsetse, Evy and I took a walk down the road to the supermarket where we picked up a few more things for dinner before heading back to the apartment for the evening.
After a month with out TV, I think we were all happy to have it again, though there were only a handful of channels and they were, of course, all in French. We tried to get the internet working on our computer, but had no luck which is disappointing as it was
one of the reasons we took this apartment and we desperately need it to research and plan the next leg of our trip.
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