Rome to Venice

On Wednesday, we had the morning in Rome before taking a train to Venice. Having woken up after 9am, we headed out along back streets and found a nice little bar/cafe for coffee and a pastry. Off to the Colosseum then and its crowds of tourists! We had read in the guide book that you could avoid the ticket line by buying tickets at a different entrance, but Jake discovered that you could also avoid the line by purchasing an audio tour for 4 extra euros each. Around the coliseum we walked learning about the brutal games and spectacles that went on there. Like 500 bears emerging from a whale skeleton! The coliseum's marble, wood and most other building materials were scavenged later to build other buildings in Rome, so large parts of it have been stabilized and excavations continue. From there we explored other Roman ruins in the huge archeological area near the Coliseum.

We caught our train with no problem, but found out that we had only validated one of the 2 tickets we needed to validate (you need to validate your ticket and get a stamp for your Eurail pass). The conductress was very nice and instead of paying the 50 euro fine she let Jake get off in Florence to get the Eurail pass stamped. We decided that if he missed the train I'd meet him in Venice, but neither of us thought it would come to that. It nearly did though and you can imagine my relief when a few minutes after the train left the station Jake appeared in the aisle! There were very long lines at the Eurail ticket window (that was true in Rome too and at the time we were congratulating each other that we didn't need to go the window since we already had our tickets!).

So we both arrived on time in Venice. There we needed to get our boat passes and public toilet passes. We stood in a line for about 25 minutes and the lady told us that we needed to go outside to another ticket office. That ticket office said try the one 100m to the right, and yes!, success at last. Then off to our B&B, conveniently located within a short walk of the station across a canal.

So it's true – EVERYTHING in Venice is transported by boat! Very cool to see the boat ambulance, garbage boat, DHL boat, boats carrying boxes and food, etc. They unload onto large dollies which are hauled around the cobbled streets for delivery. It's nice not to have to deal with cars, although there is plenty of pedestrian traffic. Tourists from all over the world are here. In both Rome and here our meagre Italian is sufficient and most people speak enough English that you wouldn't need to know any Italian.

This morning we took the #1 Vaporetto down the Grand Canal. Venice is very beautiful with a feel of decaying elegance. The first floors of many buildings along the Grand Canal have been abandoned to rising waters, but the upper floors remain occupied. There are so many flourishes and brightly painted shutters and hanging flower baskets that it seems very colorful. Wide streets give way to tiny alleys or dead end against a canal. The city has wisely posted signs that direct you from one area to another, but it is more fun to just take a street at random and see how far you can get. So far the food has been mediocre, but we have reservations tonight at a restaurant with a Michelin star!

We got off the Vaporetto at the Giardini stop where there happens to be an architectural exhibition. The whole area is part of Venice's general exhibition grounds where many countries have there own buildings like at the World's Fair. For the architectural exhibition they had exhibits on architecture in their respective countries. The main exhibition hall had different exhibits by architecture firms. Much of it was very avant-garde but really pretty interesting even to the lay-person like me. Jake was taken with the folding wooden chairs that could be stacked to form stadium seats and moved to be a full size chair or a short chair for kids. We took the vaporetto back up to San Marco, the main plaza, but avoided visiting it yet by taking back alleys until we found a place for lunch. I've decided that if you're not sure about the quality of a restaurant, pizza is a good bet!