Tour day 8
Trip Start
Aug 28, 2008
1
21
40
Trip End
Sep 24, 2008
Bacharach,
Rhineland-Palatinate,
Germany
Thursday, September 11, 2008
This is the day we drive to Venice. Lotsa bus time. I find I don't mind the bus time as much as I thought I would. Time to catch up on the blog, the scenery is invaribley beautiful, someone else is driving and napping is groovy after all of the walking the previous day.
We arrived in Venice around 2:30 and took a brief boat ride to the island. The weather is a little steamy. Humid and mid 80's. We get settled in our room. Another basic room, but at least there is AC (woohoo!). We had an 'orientatuion walk' around Venice. There are no motorized vehicles or bicycles allowed on the island, so only pedestrians... LOTS of pedestrians. My guess is that at least 2 or 3 massive cruise ships disgorge their human cargos every day in Venice. The streets are full, and quite narrow in spots. It was a little strange that English seemed to be the predominant language. Sorta like when we go to Disneyland and hear more Chinese than English.
There is certainly a reason why Venice is such a tourist hot spot. It is really old, very well preserved with pretty aewsome views almost everywhere you look. I don't have too much to say about the food or beer. Some decent pizza and German beer - mostly Heineken and Lowenbrau which was typically very cold - nice. A personal size pizza was about $9 Euro and a bottle of beer was as much as $5 Euro - YIKES! I would note that I found the service to be somewhat surly at times. I can't really blame them though. That many gawking tourists every day would make me cranky too. Especially the knuckleheads who disregard the well posted signs in most of the churches that basically say 'respectful dress includes covering your knees and shoulders and no photographs'. I was surprised and a little embarrassed by how many people ignored this.
We had a $60 Euro beer and pizza dinner with Don and Judy followed by, of course, yummy gelato. I've gotten a little stale with my gelato selections ordering a lot of choclate chip or nut choices. I may need to branch out to try some of the refreshing fruit options. Could be one of the higher risk vaction decisions I'll make.
We regroup around sunset for a gondola ride. Each gondola holds six passengers except the one that has the accordian and singer; 4 people fit on it. We have 2 couples that are celebrating their anniversaries during this tour so they we the 'lucky' ones selected to ride in that boat. Heidi and I get on a boat with Don and Judy and our new friends Doug and Tamara, a couple from Oregon. It was sundown by then and a very serene evening. Most of the cruise shipper had left. I fended off a question from Judy with the response 'let's talk about that after we finish this peaceful ride" and we all give Don enough crusty looks until he stopped rubbing his wet shoes on the deck and delighting in the squeaking noises. After we all settled down, the ride was amazing. Everything you would hope for. A clear beautiful night, centuries old buildings on either side of the smoothly gliding gondola, the gentle strains of the accordian in the background. Perfect peace. I started thinking to myself, "I've been here before" and I remember that I took a gondola ride somewhere in Las Vegas in one of the hotels (I think). It was incredibly similar. Uncanny how well they simulated this.
Then the singer starts. It wasn't too bad at first, he's a decent singer - a little pitchy as Randy Jackson would say. After he gets warmed up, he starts really belting out the arias - impressively powerful and with some real stamina. After about 10 minuted of loud singing man, I start to think, "hmm... That's a little annoying, I hope he has some softer songs in his repertiore." Nope.
After 20 minutes I start thinking about the poor people on the boat where he is singing. We were about
20 to 30 yards away most of the time. If I had been on that boat I'm pretty sure I would have yelled "save yourselves!" And jumped over the side. It's a good thing that Venice is largely deserted (more about that later) or I'm sure we would have heard plenty of "shut the hell up-a" being shouted from open windows. After we figured out that all of the folks on our boat were thinking basically the same thing, we all had a good chuckle. By the end of the ride I was laughing so hard I was crying. Good fun.
We made our way back to the hotel, stopping for a final gelato on the way.
Arrivaderci.
