Friday, May 29, 2009

Day 10 - Venice


Dinnner last night was at Sandro's in Vernazza. We dined on pesto, pasta and sword fish and lots of local white wine. We even took a bottle from the restaurant and walked down to the waterfront completing the evening with reminiscence of the past 9 days. We've had a wonderful time and can't believe that after six months of planning our Italian holiday is coming to an end. But we're all looking forward to the next leg of our separate vacations.
Tony & I woke early Friday morning & got ourselves packed up and headed out to the train. On the way out of town we stopped at the internet cafe steps to check email. While surfing we heard someone call our names from above. It was John sticking his head out of their apartment window. We wished each other farewell again and headed up to the train station. From Vernazza we had to catch the local train to Monterossa. The local Cinque Terra trains aren't real reliable and for some reason there's an hour break in train service at the time we needed to leave so we left a bit earlier, got ourselves to Monterossa and had coffee and pastry for breakfast while waiting for our train.

Besides being long, the train ride to Venice was uneventful. The scenery out of Cinque Terra was breathtaking. The countryside of Northern Italy is green and prosperous. And between Milan and Venice I think I may have spotted the mountain where our kitchen granite came from. We had passed some marble mines training out of Florence, but these mines (are they mines?) were amazing. Whole sides of mountains just sawed off. I think I'm having some granite guilt.

We pulled into the Venice's Santa Lucia train station around 5:15. Found our way to the vaparetto and floated down the Grand Canal to the Rialto Bridge. Our B&B was only a block in from the bridge and we had no trouble finding it. Climbing the steps however....left us winded. Our room was a 3rd floor attic conversion with sloping roof and open beams. We could only stand straight in half of the room and the bath. But the plumbing was new, breakfast was included and it was very clean. Not to mention the fact that it was relatively inexpensive by Venice standards,especially considering our location.

After freshening up we headed out to a restaurant recommended by our host, Cristina. More great Italian pasta and wine. We finished off the evening by walking back to the Rialto. While standing on the bridge we heard a bunch of shouting by the vaparetto stop. Oh my gosh, someone fell into the Canal while trying to get on the vaparetto! We watched as another man from shore jumped into the water to rescue the man. Then the vaparetto crew threw in a couple of life rings. There was alot of commotion and then we saw one of the crew members jumped in to the canal to assist. There was a water taxi and a gondola near by. They also helped with pulling the person out of the water. As we walked down along the canal the vaparetto was still stopped and the guy was still laying in the boat with people attending him. Being in that canal water had to have some serious health consequences.

Enough excitement. We're off to bed. Tomorrow's a busy day.

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