So, bearing in mind that I am now reflecting on this trip six months later, here I am back at the blog!
Our host at the agriturismo place outside of Verona was great in letting us use her computer, her laundry machines, her phone (all for a cost of course) to help us figure out where to go next! That's right: after Verona, we had no place lined up to sleep! So after one more lovely breakfast outside overlooking the olive groves, we were packed up, back on the road and headed for Venice.
We found a Bed and Breakfast in the nearby town of Mira which was nice enough. Here I am out our balcony/roof thing.
The owner was a lovely gentleman, whose French was better than his English, so it was time to start practicing again. While we were settling in, a Canadian couple (from Montreal) pulled up and we starting swapping Europe driving stories with them. They were shocked that we had survived without any GPS! They had paid the extra to get a GPS with their rental car and we shared a laugh over their naming her Linda and the option they were given to choose "Canadian French" as a language! Then we were off to catch the bus to Venice!
Even though Judy's guidebook highly recommended tourists to intentionally lose themselves down the side streets of Venice, we felt time-pressured and stuck to following the signs we would see periodically on the sides of buildings for "Piazza San Marco", which we knew was the place to get to. What we didn't realize until later was that these signs were not necessarily directing tourists to the famous square the quickest way. Instead, it seemed that the signs were leading us past all of the tacky tourist shops. Well, they weren't actually tacky, since they were selling lovely wares of glass and jewelry, but we did have a couple of bad experiences in shoe shops (some shoe man was uncalled-for-edly rude to us, presuming that we weren't serious buyers, while Sharon and I had it on our agenda to buy shoes in Italy (who wouldn't, right?). Then there were odd candy shops like this:
As we were finding to be necessary with our different shopping expectations, the four of us split up yet again. This proved to be a little tricky and we lost each other in the twisting streets a couple of times!
Not a great feeling, since we didn't have any cell phones or concrete back up plans! Fortunately we found each other in a massively crowded area that we first thought to be the sought-after Piazza! But as we walked on, freshly reunited, we realized that we still weren't at Saint Mark's! Grrrr. Everyone was starting to feel pretty delirious by now. Definitely exhausted and claustrophobic. Too much wandering around aimlessly and shopping, always shopping. Sigh.And then finally we felt it. The rush of air. The open skies. We heard it. The flapping pigeon wings. The buzz of thousands of people. And then, we saw it for ourselves and I felt FREE! (Here I am feeling free:)
The ladies were getting a kick out of buying knock-off designer items from street vendors (who all seemed to be from West Africa!?) and I was just taking in the interesting sights.
We investigated taking a gondola, or at least a public transit boat, but saw that even those were too pricey and we weren't actually as far from where we started as we thought. So we decided to find somewhere to eat nearby and then walk back again! It wasn't the most exciting or memorable meal, but true to Beth-form, I tried to take the most exotic item on the "menu turistico/prezzo fisso/prix fixed" and I think it was some kind of fish, which seemed the way to go while in Venice. It took awhile to get a seat and then our waiter didn't seemed too thrilled to be working.
Our walk back to the bus was probably the most interesting time since it was the road somewhat less travelled in Venice and we saw people chilling at relaxing restaurants and cafes. We were wishing that we had of held out for a such a place to revel in what is supposed to be a romantic city, fully aware of the serene lights reflecting on the waterways and couples sipping wines on patios. I imagine that my companions were missing their husbands in that moment. Yet we all were feeling pretty disappointed and exhausted with Venice at this point, and anxiety to catch the bus before it got any later and any darker took us over.
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