We arrived in Venice early Saturday morning along with about 10000 other disembarking passengers on 8 cruise ships. The port area was a crazy place but at least the embarking passengers were not out in full force yet. We schlepped our suitcases over 500+ metres to a people mover train that took us to Placa de Roma where we caught a vaparetto (water bus) to Rialto. While we had instructions on how to find our hotel, maps and directions in Venice are a curious thing. Lots of wrong turns, up and down stairs to cross canals , through narrow passages, and asking locals . And it was all very crowded. But we did eventually find our hotel and get checked in.
We went out wandering and had some lunch. While sitting have a beer and pizza an email arrived from Air France, our carrier to get home, saying our flight on Monday from Venice to Paris had been cancelled. Later on more emails from them saying Paris to Montreal too was cancelled. I believe the bus from Montreal to Ottawa was still on the schedule though. Apparently there is a pilots strike , and as we've been living in a news free bubble for several weeks, this came as somewhat of a surprise. Trying to phone Air France was a waste of time. Luckily I had texting and email access and knew my son Geof would be up around 7am at home. We got him and his wife Jane on the case. After a lot of anxiety on our part and phone calls on their part, it was eventually resolved and we fly home Monday (we hope) with British Air via London and Toronto. If for some reason we get stuck in Europe I'll be asking all my faithful readers to send Euros to help us out.
Now lets get to the interesting parts. Venice is a fascinating city with it's islands, canals, bridges, narrow alleyways, boats and gondolas, crowds of tourists, restaurants, and mostly it seems souvenir stores. And i'm sure the images that follow will be familiar to most of you even if you've never been here.
We also took a vaparetto over to Murano. The glass shops there are outstanding and it is lot less crowded. Very pretty place.
Back in Venice later.
Deen enjoying a glass of wine next to the Grand Canal.
Finally a picture of the Grand Canal taken from the Rialto Bridge about 7pm.
So I'm hoping this is my last posting in this blog series. I hope this because I want my travel day on Monday, while long, to be so uneventful that I have nothing interesting to say other than we arrived home after midnight Monday (or 6am CET Tuesday) dead tired but happy.
It's been fun for me to write these blog posts and I hope you have enjoyed them too. Bye for now.
Ran
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