Leaving the Ship Behind - Venice, Italy
Venice, Italy
After squeezing in as much as we could yesterday in port, we came back to the ship for our final packing to leave. Everything but our backpacks were taken away last night after midnight. This takes some planning. Only bare essentials needed to fit in the backpacks. All the electronics needed to be fully charged for the final time to pack chargers, last showers taken to pack the toiletries, and all remaining clean clothes with PJs were contained to one suitcase for easier use in the next two hotels we will be staying in on our way home. This takes some thought and coordination. If you pack too much in your luggage, your are walking off in PJs. I've seen it. It wasn't pretty.
Once you are off the ship, you find your luggage in the cruise terminal based on the color of your luggage tag which they assign. Early flyers had brown and aqua colored tags. We were orange 3. We knew we would be called around 9:30 and close to last to leave the ship because we were heading to a hotel. When all you own while sitting on a cruise ship waiting for your tag color to be called is a backpack with PJs, a toothbrush, iPad, phone, some cords, and a book, it takes little time to get ready in the morning. We sat on the deck at breakfast waiting for our color to be called...and it never was. Before getting to orange they announced that all colors had been called and everyone remaining should head to deck 7 to debark. All the oranges 1, 2, and 3, headed to the gangway. (I'm assuming 1 and 2 existed because they were listed on the schedule, and we were 3). We were the gang not leaving town. Each number had a different hotel to go to with a shuttle bus waiting to take them. I only saw Orange 3 tags like ours. All orange 3s passed on the hotel options that were $900 and $500 a night in Venice itself. We were the cheap ones heading to a Crown Plaza waaaay out on the mainland. We were shuttled to the middle of nowhere on the other side of the airport to spend our final night. Lisa and I decided this was a sanity thing. We didn't want to be dragging luggage over bridges, through high tides, and in and out of water shuttles. When we got off the ship this morning, our belongings were getting closer to the airport to make that long trip home.
We had two shuttle buses heading to this hotel. Lisa and I hatched a plan. We were going to hightail it to the lobby to check in so that we could be on a train back to Venice sooner than later. We were on a mission! We left the guys to gather the luggage and the kids. These buses were filled with tired people who has luggage to collect from storage under the bus. We could beat them! The first bus was parked before we were, and we were close to the middle on the second, but it worked. We arrived around 10:30. I was first in line and pulled Lisa up to check in with me. Next train was 10:58, and if we missed that one, the next one wasn't until 12:40. Our room was ready, so we threw everyone's luggage in our room while Lisa bought train tickets at the font desk of our hotel. We had eight minutes to get to the train, which was right behind the hotel, but we didn't know how to get to it. We found the tunnel, ran to the tracks, and quickly squeezed on to an overpacked train where an Italian behind us saw our tickets in our hands and told us we hadn't validated our tickets. It seems that in Italy it is not enough to buy a train ticket. One must make the ticket feel worthy through validation. One must stick it in a machine to have the date stamp put on it. The European ways for rail travel we experienced are pretty flimsy for reinforcing an honest system. You could cheat your way around the rail system without anyone checking, but if you need to use a restroom in public, they mean business about your business. You WILL pay! 1€. This makes no sense to me because if people have no money, the alternative to a pay toilet is not a desirable option for public places. Of course free toilets are all over our big cities, and yet our cities are often used as free toilets.
We made the train, made the right train (huge bonus!), and did not get kicked off the train for not making our tickets feel good about themselves. We made it back to Venice to start a very long day of exploring...if only so many people didn't have the same idea, it would have been ideal. I can't imagine what peak season is like in Venice. It is no wonder this city is sinking. When the tourists leave for the evening, the city probably gains two feet in altitude.
The 36 hour vaporetto tickets we purchased yesterday came in handy to help us avoid the crowded avenues of Venice, that is when the vaporettos weren't so full that we could use them. I had a map to find our way around. I had two actually. Eleven total if you include the vaporetto maps—a complicated system at first glance, but we got it figured out. There are so many streets in Venice that are so short you can't print the names small enough to fit the marking on the map. Throw in canals everywhere with 420 bridges (which I believe we crossed half of them in our two short days), it gets confusing. But we did find our way through Venice using yellow signs with arrows painted on the side of buildings directing us to Rialto, Marco, and Roma as the landmarks we aimed for. Marco was St. Marks Square where St. Marks church and the Doge's Palace were located. That was the furthest area we traveled to on the island. It was located on the lagoon on the south side. Roma was the area by the people mover near the cruise ships, and Rialto was the landmark bridge of Venice about halfway between Roma and Marco. If we made it to the Rialto Bridge, we could follow the Grand Canal to the train station (to get to he mainland) and Roma. I think these signs were a ploy by the locals to keep the sprawling crowds contained to a few avenues, because every avenue I looked down while passing them was empty. We were turned around once by heading too far west instead of north trying to get the Rialto Bridge and ended up in a quiet area with very few tourist. Lisa asked a local at a newsstand how to get to the train, and he said, "Take a second right and then a left". That second right was so narrow it was as dark as night at 4 in the afternoon, and only five people passed us the other way. Once we made that left we were back in the masses.
All of these little streets and avenues are lined with stores, delis, gelato stands, and restaurants. If you want to grab a bite to eat and keep moving, you can grab a sandwich or pizza slice to go for a few euros. If you are tired from walking for hours and want to sit and eat, the closer you are to water the more expensive it's going to get. Looking for lunch today we found a place serving pizza next to the Rialto bridge. We were crammed into a tiny nook and handed menus with prices that made the eyebrows meet the hairline, AND there was no pizza. Pizza was being eaten at tables around us. We asked about pizza, and the waiter brought us that page missing from our menu. We were tourists, and we were being toyed with. We should have walked then. When he came to take our order, I said the kids were splitting a pizza to which he became very indignant and said it was one pizza per person and no sharing allowed. Without hesitation I announced, "Now we are leaving!", and we got up and moved on. The bill for our table of seven would have been close to $100 for pizza and Cokes for lunch while being squished in a corner on rickety chairs. Wasn't going to happen. We moved on to a better location with better prices and better manners by the service.
We wandered the streets watching the gondolas pass by while poking around glass and mask shops to admire the beauty. When a pastry shop or gelato stand got our attention, we would stop to taste something. As we worked our way back to the train to head back to the hotel around seven in the evening, we grabbed sandwiches to go. We got on the right train that stopped at our hotel, and headed to our rooms. After distributing luggage to the proper rooms, I decided to grab a shower and discovered a bathroom so big that eight of our ship bathrooms could fit inside it! It was almost as big as our sleep area. We had gotten so used to cramped quarters that the most exciting thing about our hotel was how huge the bathroom was. An added bonus was this shower didn't move!
Venice was beautiful and romantic. What a perfect way to end our trip! Tomorrow we fly. Gotta say I'm looking forward to walking on surfaces that don't move and having some quiet time without crowds to maneuver through. We've traveled over ten thousands miles by air and sea, walked close to a hundred miles in cities and historic sites, and we've climbed thousands of steps as we've explored churches, ruins, and made our way around the ship. It's been the trip of a lifetime...so far. We're already thinking about where we are going next. I'm thinking Russia and Iceland.