Venice

Venice Italy

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Nine years earlier, I had spent a half-day in Venice. But, I always had the feeling that I hadn't really seen the city. This time we spent a day and half and walked around a lot. Venice is such a compact city; you can wander around aimlessly and still not lose your way.
Our first destination was to go to Piazza di San Marco or St. Marks Plaza. St. Marks cathedral and the Campanile stand adjacent to a large enclosed plaza. The Campanile is the original clock tower, upon which the design of Sather Tower (a.k.a. "the Campanile") on the campus of my alma mater, University of California at Berkeley is based. There were puddles of standing water in the plaza. Apparently, the plaza was flooded during the high tide sometime in the night. Near the cathedral there was raised walkway made with some scaffolding. Since Venice gets flooded around 60 times a year, they have scaffolding ready at all times. I walked into cathedral on the raised walkway, as the floodwater had not yet receded from the steps. Inside the sanctuary a priest chastised me for wearing a baseball cap, once again (see my write-up on the Notre Dame).
Next we went to the Rialto Bridge. It is one of the major bridges that cross the Grand Canal. The bridge is wide enough to have gift and trinket stores in the middle band of the bridge. Pedestrians walk on either side of the stores. It seemed to be travesty to deface this famous bridge with these stores.

We decided to have a Chinese dinner at Ristorante China Town, which is next to the Grand Canal fairly close to the train station. We were rather tired of European food by this time. Pauline remembered this place from her last trip to Venice. The food was pretty good. While we were there, we met two American women, one of whom had lived in Venice for over 7 years. We asked her about Venice sinking. She scoffed and said that it wasn't sinking. Rather, she said, the water is rising due to global warming. Either way flooding would be increasingly more of a problem.
The Train from Rome to Venice
After our experiences with pickpockets in Paris, we really didn't want to spend much time in a large city like Rome. We didn't have that much time left on our vacation, and we were still planning to see both Venice and a bit of Switzerland. We had also heard that Venice was slowly sinking into the sea each year, and that in 10 years the city may be no longer be habitable (more about that later). We decided to bypass Rome and go directly to Venice.
As we were boarding the train to Venice, a young woman from within the entryway of the rail car, grabbed our luggage and placed them in the luggage storage area. Although she wasn't wearing a uniform of any sort, we thought she might be a porter or some other employee of the railroad. I pulled the luggage out of the storage area and proceeded toward our reserved seats, as we wanted to keep our bags fairly close to us in the overhead luggage racks or behind the seats. The young woman started to protest and she held out her hand. She wanted to be paid for her services. Now, we understood what this was all about. For a moment of indecision, I wasn't sure whether to pay her or not. Normally, we are generous with tipping. But, since we didn't ask her to help us with our bags in the first place, we didn't feel obligated to pay her. She repeated her demand in Italian. I kept refusing her. She finally gave up and said something to me, which was probably some type of Italian obscenity. We noticed that she got off the train before it left the station. I felt kind of bad. Perhaps, this is how the woman earned her living. But, we resented how she forced her services upon us.
Mestre
We got off the train in the city of Mestre, which is last mainland stop before the causeway goes out to the island city of Venice. Mestre is just 10 minutes away by train or bus from Venice. The train runs every few minutes from Mestre to Venice and vice-versa. The bus runs every 20 minutes. We stayed at the Best Western Hotel Bologna, which is just across the street from the Mestre train station, making it a very convenient place to stay. The hotel was quite nice with clean ultra modern rooms. The continental breakfast served every morning was also good.
The Couchette
We were to take an overnight train from Venice to Zurich, Switzerland, our final stop. Sleeping aboard a train would be uncomfortable at best. But, the discomfort would be somewhat mitigated by reserving either a sleeper compartment or a "couchette" compartment. Couchettes are fold-down bed bunks that are basically stiff boards with a little padding. Reserving a sleeper compartment was as expensive as a hotel room. But, a couchette compartment was fairly reasonable at around 25 euros per person. Gail found making these reservations to be a royal pain. First, these reservations could not be made from the U.S. Then, she found that the reservations for a train from Italy to Switzerland could not be made from France. Finally, she was able to make the reservations near Rome. But, the four of us were scattered in 3 different couchette compartments, having to share them with strangers. The ticket office advised Gail to ask the conductor to co-locate us in the same couchette compartment once we boarded the train.
We had some difficulty figuring out which train to take from the station in Mestre. The tickets we had were from Venice, not from Mestre, to Zurich. The departures board didn't list Zurich as one of the destinations. Late at night the ticket offices were closed. We asked numerous people, but nobody seemed to know which train would go to Zurich. We finally found one person who told us that the train with a final destination of Nice, France would go through Zurich. The time schedule for the Nice train seemed to be aligned with the scheduled time printed on our tickets.
We got onto the train and immediately asked the conductor to see if he could co-locate the four of us into the same couchette compartment. He was able to put us together. The conductor spoke very good English. He explained to us how the operate the compartment lock. I wasn't certain how to climb up to the upper couchette bunk. The small table seemed too flimsy for me to stand on. The conductor explained that there was a ladder stowed below the lower bunks. Well, of course.
The train was noisy and bumpy. But, I managed to conk out on my couchette.


Nine years earlier, I had spent a half-day in Venice. But, I always had the feeling that I hadn't really seen the city. This time we spent a day and half and walked around a lot. Venice is such a compact city; you can wander around aimlessly and still not lose your way. Our first destination was to go to Piazza di San Marco or St. Marks Plaza. St. Marks cathedral and the Campanile stand adjacent to a large enclosed plaza. The Campanile is the original clock tower, upon which the design of Sather Tower (a.k.a. "the Campanile") on the campus of my alma mater, University of California at Berkeley is based. There were puddles of standing water in the plaza. Apparently, the plaza was flooded during the high tide sometime in the night. Near the cathedral there was raised walkway made with some scaffolding. Since Venice gets flooded around 60 times a year, they have scaffolding ready at all times. I walked into cathedral on the raised walkway, as the floodwater had not yet receded from the steps. Inside the sanctuary a priest chastised me for wearing a baseball cap, once again (see my write-up on the Notre Dame). Next we went to the Rialto Bridge. It is one of the major bridges that cross the Grand Canal. The bridge is wide enough to have gift and trinket stores in the middle band of the bridge. Pedestrians walk on either side of the stores. It seemed to be travesty to deface this famous bridge with these stores.

We decided to have a Chinese dinner at Ristorante China Town, which is next to the Grand Canal fairly close to the train station. We were rather tired of European food by this time. Pauline remembered this place from her last trip to Venice. The food was pretty good. While we were there, we met two American women, one of whom had lived in Venice for over 7 years. We asked her about Venice sinking. She scoffed and said that it wasn't sinking. Rather, she said, the water is rising due to global warming. Either way flooding would be increasingly more of a problem. The Train from Rome to Venice After our experiences with pickpockets in Paris, we really didn't want to spend much time in a large city like Rome. We didn't have that much time left on our vacation, and we were still planning to see both Venice and a bit of Switzerland. We had also heard that Venice was slowly sinking into the sea each year, and that in 10 years the city may be no longer be habitable (more about that later). We decided to bypass Rome and go directly to Venice. As we were boarding the train to Venice, a young woman from within the entryway of the rail car, grabbed our luggage and placed them in the luggage storage area. Although she wasn't wearing a uniform of any sort, we thought she might be a porter or some other employee of the railroad. I pulled the luggage out of the storage area and proceeded toward our reserved seats, as we wanted to keep our bags fairly close to us in the overhead luggage racks or behind the seats. The young woman started to protest and she held out her hand. She wanted to be paid for her services. Now, we understood what this was all about. For a moment of indecision, I wasn't sure whether to pay her or not. Normally, we are generous with tipping. But, since we didn't ask her to help us with our bags in the first place, we didn't feel obligated to pay her. She repeated her demand in Italian. I kept refusing her. She finally gave up and said something to me, which was probably some type of Italian obscenity. We noticed that she got off the train before it left the station. I felt kind of bad. Perhaps, this is how the woman earned her living. But, we resented how she forced her services upon us. Mestre We got off the train in the city of Mestre, which is last mainland stop before the causeway goes out to the island city of Venice. Mestre is just 10 minutes away by train or bus from Venice. The train runs every few minutes from Mestre to Venice and vice-versa. The bus runs every 20 minutes. We stayed at the Best Western Hotel Bologna, which is just across the street from the Mestre train station, making it a very convenient place to stay. The hotel was quite nice with clean ultra modern rooms. The continental breakfast served every morning was also good. The Couchette We were to take an overnight train from Venice to Zurich, Switzerland, our final stop. Sleeping aboard a train would be uncomfortable at best. But, the discomfort would be somewhat mitigated by reserving either a sleeper compartment or a "couchette" compartment. Couchettes are fold-down bed bunks that are basically stiff boards with a little padding. Reserving a sleeper compartment was as expensive as a hotel room. But, a couchette compartment was fairly reasonable at around 25 euros per person. Gail found making these reservations to be a royal pain. First, these reservations could not be made from the U.S. Then, she found that the reservations for a train from Italy to Switzerland could not be made from France. Finally, she was able to make the reservations near Rome. But, the four of us were scattered in 3 different couchette compartments, having to share them with strangers. The ticket office advised Gail to ask the conductor to co-locate us in the same couchette compartment once we boarded the train. We had some difficulty figuring out which train to take from the station in Mestre. The tickets we had were from Venice, not from Mestre, to Zurich. The departures board didn't list Zurich as one of the destinations. Late at night the ticket offices were closed. We asked numerous people, but nobody seemed to know which train would go to Zurich. We finally found one person who told us that the train with a final destination of Nice, France would go through Zurich. The time schedule for the Nice train seemed to be aligned with the scheduled time printed on our tickets. We got onto the train and immediately asked the conductor to see if he could co-locate the four of us into the same couchette compartment. He was able to put us together. The conductor spoke very good English. He explained to us how the operate the compartment lock. I wasn't certain how to climb up to the upper couchette bunk. The small table seemed too flimsy for me to stand on. The conductor explained that there was a ladder stowed below the lower bunks. Well, of course. The train was noisy and bumpy. But, I managed to conk out on my couchette.