You can see pictures from this day here.
Kuniko and I were both up early – we really didn’t sleep much on the trip. We looked at the train ticket and found that our stop was coming up in about 20 minutes, so we grabbed our stuff and got ready to leave. The conductor came by and gave us our passports back, and then we went over to the exit to try to get off as soon as the train stopped.
The twenty minutes came and went and finally, the train slowed to a stop. Unfortunately, it wasn’t where we wanted to be – it was a tiny stop outside Florence. We waited again, and it was almost another 20 minutes before we arrived at the station in Florence – Firenze di Campo.
We got off the train, and started looking for the next train to take us to Venice. Bad news – it wasn’t there. In fact, we weren’t even at the right station. Sure we had arrived in Florence, but it wasn’t the right station in Florence. We had to figure out the situation, stress over tickets, get on a slow train to go two stops, and then we were in the correct station.
As I figured out later, the long distance overnight train stops just outside the major terminals to clean up and restock, and then it pulls into the big terminal empty and ready to go. They don’t want to have to try to clean it at the main station with people getting on early and all the hassle that goes along with that. It makes sense, but at the time we were completely lost. After having a rough night on the overnight train, we weren’t in great moods and again there was nothing to be done but curse the Eurail company for not telling us about making these connections.
Luckily, the next train was a fast, clean train and we had first class tickets. Unfortunately for the people sitting next to us, we didn’t look too good, and we didn’t smell great, either. No showers on the overnight trains, and I probably wouldn’t have wanted to use it if there was one.
It was about three hours to Venice from Florence, and so Kuniko and I got caught up on sleep, enjoyed free coffee and snacks delivered by a steward, and took in the scenery. The time passed quickly. On this trip we were surrounded by an American family doing a family vacation. The boy and his father traded insults as they played cards, and the mother and daughter discussed the things they wanted to buy once they arrived. It was nice to be able to chat with Kuniko in private right in front of them – language, it’s a beautiful thing.
We arrived in Venice and it was amazing. You take a railroad bridge over a large body of water, and then show up in a modern train station. After you leave the train station, the Grand Canal is right there in front of you – it’s a dramatic entrance. Everywhere I looked I wanted to take a picture. The canals, the old buildings, the boats, the people – it was completely different from everything we had seen so far in France.
One thing we discovered right away, it’s easy to get lost in Venice. The streets can get very narrow, and if it weren’t for some well placed signs we would still be there looking for the way out. Everywhere you went you passed tourists consulting maps and trying to figure out how to get somewhere. Kuniko worked out how to get to our hotel, and it wasn’t too long before we were walking towards it.
I had done a lot of research on the hotel and picked out a room via the website – so I was eager to see if it met my expectations. Kuniko looked at the one star rating on the sign and was a little worried, but once we saw the room we were happy.
The room was right on the canal – you just open the door/window and there was a boat and water right outside. That made for some nice moments when gondolas would pass by with the gondola man singing or playing music – it sounded like they might come inside our room. The floor was tile and the bathroom was nice and spacious. It was a really nice room.
We were kind of worn out so we did just a little bit of sightseeing that day. We ate calzones for lunch, and ended up having dinner in our room – some pizza, a panini sandwich, a rolled sandwich, and a bottle of Cote D’Or chardonnay that we smuggled out of Dijon and drank right from the bottle. We went out just one more time to take some evening pictures, but the skies started to threaten so we came back to our room just in time to avoid a late night rain shower. It was nice to fall asleep with the rain hitting the water of the canal right outside our window. All in all a much more pleasant evening than the night before.
