Italy November 2005 - Day 1 - Travel and Venice

Traveling and Venice

We left Austin Thursday afternoon. Our route was Austin to Dallas, Dallas to London (Gatwick), and finally London to Venice. The trip was fairly uneventful. Our flight out of Dallas was slightly delayed and the trip was quite bumpy frequently. I had a difficult time sleeping on the plane which I needed to do so that I could quickly get adjusted to the time. We were served dinner (I had remembered to call ahead and order a vegetarian meal) and breakfast on the plane. We arrived in Gatwick on Friday morning feeling very sleepy for our 3 hour layover.

The Gatwick airport is very strange. You sit in a main terminal until about 30 minutes before the flight when your gate information is displayed on a screen, then you can head to your gate. The main terminal is two levels with shopping and dining all around. There were way too many perfume shops so it was a little overwhelming. We shopped around a bit and paid way too much for some magazines (a British entertainment magazine filled with Harry Potter info and a Sci-Fi/Fantasy magazine, also with Harry Potter on the cover). I tried to find the new George R. R. Martin book since it is already out over here, but nobody had it in stock. We grabbed the cheapest lunch we could find (it wasn't just the magazines that were expensive) before settling into some chairs to wait for our flight to pop up on the board.

Our flight finally showed up on the board so we took a long walk to the terminal and boarded the plane to Venice. At this point we were like zombies and fell immediately asleep. I woke up with about 30 minutes left in the flight to see a veggie meal and a regular meal on the empty seat next to Roger. I wasn't too hungry but I wasn't sure when our next meal might be so I ate the sandwich. As the flight descended I reviewed some key phrases in my Italian phrase-book (along with half the flight - they might as well have given us all a lesson at the same time).

Venice was cloudy and misty but not rainy. The airport was small and easy to navigate. We passed quickly through passport control and I collected our bags while Roger changed some money. We got totally, totally gypped and paid an 11% commission so we got 30 lousy Euros for our $50 traveler's check. We then headed towards customs which consisted of a line if you have something to declare, and then a large doorway for nothing to declare. We went through the nothing to declare doorway which led outside. I guess they aren't very strict with their enforcement.

We found the booth where we could pick up our pre-paid "Venice Cards." These cards grant three day unlimited access to several museums, all the water bus (vaporetti) and the public restrooms. We also bought some bus tickets into the city. Finding the bus proved to be the most difficult part of our journey, but we eventually located it and got onboard for the 20 minute ride to Venice. Once in Venice, we picked up a water bus to head to our hotel. We hopped off the water bus and began our journey to the hotel which was actually quite easy to find once we located the "street" that it was was on. We passed it initially due to the fact that it looked less like a street and more like a tiny ally. It eventually widened and we found our hotel easily.

Our hotel ended up being in a great location - about halfway between Rialto and Piazza San Marco. While the room was itty bitty, it was clean and had everything we needed. Well, almost. I could have used a pillow that wasn't as flat as a pancake, hard as a rock, and as lumpy as a bowl of day old oatmeal.

We arrived at around 7 and after we checked in and freshened up (I seriously needed to wash my face, brush my teeth and at the very least, apply some fresh deodorant) we headed out into the evening to grab some dinner (pizza) and explore our surroundings (getting lost).

We did a bit of shopping and noted possible purchased we wanted to make before leaving Venice. I bought a little ring made from glass beads. There was a lot of glass around Venice, mostly from the glass-blowing island of Murano, though we went into a couple of shops where the proprietor was using a small torch at a workbench to make small glass figures. We also had our first gelato of the trip (with many more to come). I got strawberry and Roger had chocolate chips. It was wonderful and we enjoyed it while we wandered around the narrow streets of of Venice.

Before turning in for the night, we flipped through the channels on the TV, laughing some of the silly ads we saw. I didn't sleep well in Venice. I'm not sure if it was the lumpy pillow, the fact that our room as a little warm, or that when it was warm and we opened the window, we were attacked by mosquitos (I bear 7 or 8 bites - I hope they don't have any malaria or west-nile here). When we woke up the next morning, we had slept enough and we were, for the most part, adjusted to the 7 hour time difference.

Click here for Day 2.