Mediterranean Cruise 2016 Day 1-2

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We're off on a 12-day cruise around Italy, Greece and Albania. We will embark in Venice and disembark in Rome. We have added three days' of padding in both Venice and Rome so we can tour these cities solo.

After a short hop to Montreal, we fly directly to Venice. Our plane is a venerable Boeing 767. The touch screens embedded in the seats have been taken out, and the plane is instead equipped with a local wi-fi entertainment system that you connect to through a web browser using any mobile device. Ear buds are for rent but we have own our Bose noise-cancelling headphone. The flaw is that your device inevitably goes to sleep, making it difficult to, say, listen to baroque music in order to relax and fall asleep. The trick is to prop one thumb on the screen so that it stays there even when you dose off.

Although the flight is uneventful and smooth, there is nothing but fitful sleep for these two passengers.

We arrive the next morning at Venice's Marco Polo airport. It's not a large airport. All the planes load and unload in the centre of a giant rectangle, and passengers are moved to and from the terminal by buses that race along the periphery of the rectangle. We board the shuttle that takes us from the airport, across the causeway to the island of Venice, dropping us off at the Piazella Roma, where all cars and buses have to stop. As you probably know, there are no cars in Venice. On land you can walk or take a bike, but going any distance requires a boat of some sort.

We have selected our hotel, the Best Western Olimpia, at least partially because of its proximity to the transit system. The hotel is supposed to be "no more than 100 metres" from the Piazella. After getting a "that-a-way" wave from the bus driver, I locate the hotel, and it's close alright, but there are two canals in the way! So this requires trundling all your luggage up, over and down the said bridges. This in fact appears to be a common Venetian pastime: lugging things on wheels over bridges. If a luggage manufacturer wanted to demonstrate the durability of the wheels on his products, Venice would be the place to film the commercial.

Our hotel manages to be both quaint and modern. The desk staff are very friendly and give us a quick orientation tour using a map of Venice. We meet Arif, who takes our luggage up and shows us around the room, refusing a tip. Our room is lovely; not large but beautifully decorated in what I would ignorantly call Louis XIV style, with a nice view of the two canals we just crossed.
The weather, by the way, is fantastic: about 23° with not a cloud in the sky.

By this time it's early afternoon and we'd starting to get a bit hungry. So we sit down at the tables alongside the canal outside the hotel to take advantage of our free invitational prosecco and to have lunch. Arif comes out to take our order. So you do everything, we ask him. Yes, everything but cook, we are told. We enjoy our prosecco and some tasty pasta and discuss what to do with the rest of our day.

One of Violet's guide books said that the most important thing to do in Venice is to get lost, so we strike out with the general goal of finding the Grand Canal. Heading in that general direction (north) we stop at anything we find interesting, be it a shop, building or park. There's a pretty little park nearby where the locals hang out (and some of the younger ones make out), and a magnificent marble building with Roman columns that turns out to be a university.

We eventually find the Grand Canal and plod along its south bank. Such a busy place! The sidewalks are clogged with people. Many tourists like ourselves, of course, but also locals out with the families, as it is Sunday. Large water buses, smaller water taxis and gondolas ply the waters of the canal non-stop. All manner of items are being transported by boat. We even spot a grand piano, legless and on its side, being ferried up the canal. If you don't have a boat, you have to move your item by hand. The Venetians have a special handcart with one set of big wheels in the back and a pair of smaller ones in front to allow them to negotiate their heavy loads up and down the many stairs of Venice's more than 400 bridges.

We walk as far as the Ponte Scalzi, one of the major bridges across the Grand Canal. While Violet waits at the bottom, I ascend to the top to take pictures in each direction. There I am amused to see someone trying to entice passers-by to play the "three boxes" game; essentially to guess which box the pea ends up under. "Come on, try for free," he is clearly saying, and of course the first time you will successfully find the pea, but once money is involved, it becomes a different game.

Time to start hearing for home. We set off directly south and try to guess which streets in the maze will lead us closer to the cheese. It's quite interesting, because even a fairly broad alley can turn a corner into a dead end or be blocked by a canal. A fun game, as long as you win. Eventually I am pleased to duck through a low doorway and find myself beside a canal that I recognize. And soon we are back at the hotel.

One thing I am sure; we will not go hungry in Venice, as the streets abound with restaurants, bars and cafés. We decide to head south along a nearby canal called the Rio Nuovo. Eventually we settle on a sidewalk restaurant called the Hosteria Venexian. As we're not all that hungry, we decide to split a plate of mixed grilled seafood and vegetables. Good choice! We particularly like the smelts and calamari. Combined with a bottle of prosecco, it is a feast fit for kings.

We notice that small groups of people carrying a flag are repeatly parading down the sidewalk. They are clearly protesting something, but we're not sure what. On about the third pass, we ask them what's on the flag. The answer: a cruise ship in a red circle with a line through it. The man's English is not very good but he passionately explains that the big cruise ships are damaging the fragile ecology of Venice. He may well be right, but we prudently don't mention that we are part of th problem.

On the way back to the hotel, we indulge in gelato: hazelnut for me and mixed fruit for the wife. Heavenly.

It's now about 9:30 pm and we are wiped because last night was essentially sleepless and because of the time change. We shower and fall asleep as soon as our heads hit the pillow.

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Photos

Olimpia Hotel
Venice, Italy

View from our room
Olimpia Hotel, Venice, Italy

Grand Canal
Venice, Italy

Pont Scalzi
Grand Canal, Venice, Italy

Typical backwater canal
Venice, Italy

Gelato!
Venice, Italy

Comments

[Karen]

Venice!
I am looking forward to another great blog adventure David and Violet!!!!