Monday (Yesterday). Woke up to heavy skies and the threat of rain. Well, as far as I can see, I did, because it’s only possible to see out of the bathroom window at the moment. Every other one is shuttered, so the house is dark, but it’s also being kept warmer and drier. Also, yesterday-yesterday (Sunday), we saw the news that Greek airspace had to be closed due to a technical glitch (sounds like a bit more than a glitch), and there was disruption all of Sunday morning and most of the day. Well, weren’t we lucky to have flown in on Saturday morning? 24 hours later, and we’d still not be home (Tuesday).
For now, it’s back to the trip…
Venice
The Verona hotel was situated beside and above a branch of McDonald’s and on the way home on our first night, we were thrilled to see we had a police escort. That they were tending to someone from the fast-fat outlet rather took the thrill off the moment, but there appeared to be no bloodshed involved. I think the dispute was over the finding of a hamburger inside a cardboard bun. Apparently, the young man had not only discovered some reconstituted meat, but he had also taken a bite and was severely upset by the false advertising. I don’t know; I sailed past and into our hotel thinking, ‘Serves him right.’
The morning brought a breakfast room with the expected selection of hot and cold this-and-thats, people of various nationalities, and the usual morning conversations and greetings. That done, and wrapped up against the expected cold, we hiked off back to the train station at dawn, and later, caught our booked train onwards to Venice.
This meant we were now day trippers, but not the type who can only holiday in guided packs. We had no stick and flag to follow, no constant voice in an earpiece, and no coach to collect and spew us from one location to another. Intrepid, ready for adventure and keen to discuss what we might see, we watched the distant Dolomites, and (I think it was on this journey) got told off for talking in the ‘silent’ carriage. It wasn’t, actually; it was a quiet carriage, which meant soft talk and no phones. This hadn’t computed with the Italian couple at the end, who clearly enjoyed mobile phone use. They, however, were left unchallenged by the diminutive and dare I say it, rather rounded, woman who marched past, challenged Jenine with a stare and said, at mezzo forte, ‘You do know this is the silent carriage,’ with such an accusatory tone I half expected to be led away. Replying to such self-appointed officialdom is pointless, and the likes of this woman are best ignored with enthusiasm, so we did just that and let her go on her way. The four of us spent the rest of the journey taking the pizzicato out of the diva at the same pianissimo volume we had been before, until we arrived in Venice.
When one thinks of railway stations, one usually pictures their facades. St Pancras, in London, for example, has one of the most outstanding frontages of any building. However grand and wonderful the station, the locomotives, the carriages, journey and service, the splendour of an arrival is often ruined by what you see as soon as you step out of the station’s own world, and into the real one. Usually, as in Milan, you have streets, tall buildings, cars, buses, trams, whatever, and a load of people trying to push past you to get in. When you leave the arches of St Pancras, what greets you? Camden Town Hall and the Euston Road, but in Venice, when you leave the station, you enter upstage centre onto the set of an opera. A piazza. A canal cuts left to right, there’s a bridge, a copper-domed church with classical portico, colourful buildings built, it seems, on water, and the early morning light of a clear, blue-sky day, and somewhere, sadly, some malaka singing ‘Just one Cornetto…’ Though, if you are lucky and happen to be standing by an opera malaka, you might hear a whispering of, ‘O Solo Mio’, but either way, nothing compares to the sight.
The sights continue as we offer Harry the Map a glance of the map in the manner of a handler giving a hound a sniff of the fugitive’s vest, and the chase is on. It’s on, and over, under, around, through, by and finally, to St Mark’s Square, where, at midday, Neil had gifted us all half an hour with a gondolier and his gondola.
Before that, though, there’s time to admire, learn, see, wonder, and, after a good long walk, sit. The first treat of the trip comes in the form of four Aperol sprits at €20.00 each. (You want to gulp at that, but at those prices, you can only afford to sip.) Still, once in a lifetime, and it’s a clear, crisp day, not yet too busy, and the drinks tray comes laden with the best nibbles Carrefour have on offer.
I’ll let the gallery speak for the rest of the day, but along the way, and during our ten-mile walk of Venice that day, we saw many sights, including a flotilla of father Christmases, cathedrals and their interiors, the winding canals and backstreets, a pizza shop where we had a rather confused lunch that was very tasty, the gondola ride of course, where our man didn’t sing, and a long walk back to catch the train. On the way, we stopped at a random doorway so Jenine could photograph us three ‘boys’ in an old doorway which, she realised later, had been the same one she’d photographed her travel mates in back in 1867 or whenever it was. Spooky coincidence, or what?
Back to the train (and our Club Class seats), and back to Verona at dusk, where, after a quick wash-and-change stop at the hotel, it was back out to tramp the streets to find something more to eat, and see some more nighttime sighs before packing for the next day’s journey to Innsbruck via the Brenner Pass.
