Getting a Venetian tan on my feet


Advertisement
Italy's flag
Europe » Italy » Veneto » Venice
July 5th 2007
Published: July 5th 2007
Edit Blog Post

The last time i'd seen Venice was in the european autumn of 1991. San Marco square was covered in water, and it was bleak.
This year my friend and i arrived to a warm summer's day. The train was late leaving Milan; my italian was rusty, and after 20 odd hours in a plane, i was slightly jet lagged.

So being late didn't really matter because it would still be light when we met up with our B&B co ordinator.

The train was crowded, and we barely managed to get seats. We had not bothered with the "prenotazione", and maybe with hindsight we could have travelled most of the way together, as opposed to different carriages. However it turned out for the best because that was how I met the tango woman.

Simon and I are tango dancers, and we are always on the look out for 'milongas', which are tango socials.
From Australia I had attempted to contact tango oblivion.it, to no avail. Apparently, we'd been told, the venetians go away in the summer, so there's not much tango. As i am chatting with the woman sitting in the seat opposite mine, my eyes wandered to the people in the corridor; it was very crowded. ANd a woman talking on her cell phone is sitting right in front of my eyes with a black bag that has "Tango Oblivion.it" on it....
I couldn't believe my luck. She spoke english, and remembered my email (i guess how many tango dancers from Australia does one meet?) . We spoke at length and she gave me all the details for the 3 milongas that would be on during our stay in the city.


After the bulk of the passengers got off at Padua, Verona and Vincenza, the trip was quiet, and the first sights of the city over the water were beautiful.
We stepped onto the platform and beautiful heat (coming from an australian winter, this was very much appreciated)
I'd read in the guide books about buying 3 days tickets, so we kind of figured out we'd need 72 hours worth of vaporetto travel, and searched for Vaporetto No1, which would take us to the B&B stop of Ca' Rezzonico.
Dazed from travelling, which way were we supposed to go? A vaporetto arrived, but the guard was moody and our way was blocked by a dithering family of five, and we missed our chance to step on the ferry. That was our first lesson: don't let anyone get in your way. I don't mean that you need to push and shove, but you need to be aware that some people are just not organised, and you need to move forward to get to where you need to be: ie on the ferry.
We met a american couple who had also just come from Australia. We started talking wine and customs. They had just bought 50 bottles of wine when customs had decided that nothing over 100ml could be taken on board....Hmmm, so it had to be drunk....
It was well past 7pm, and the ferry was wasn't crowded. We got off at Ca' Rezzonico to be met by our B&B man.
He wasn't very talkative, but then again neither were we. So after a short walk in what that day seemed like a maze, we arrived at our home for the next 6 days.
More tomorrow on getting the tan....
Erika

Advertisement



Tot: 0.057s; Tpl: 0.009s; cc: 5; qc: 43; dbt: 0.0373s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1; ; mem: 1.1mb