Our day started out well enough, the sunrise over Venice made for a beautiful send off. We woke up very early, grabbed the early Vaparetto (water bus), heading to a location near the train terminal where we caught a bus to the Treviso airport.
The Treviso airport is a tiny regional airport used by Ryan Air that has about 10 seats for about 500 people, all with bags, back packs, purses, shopping bags, pillows, and other assorted travel items, all ready to head off to...wherever. To be fair, there was evidence of a new terminal being built that will probably be ready for use sometime within the next decade. Whew.
We flew from Venice to another smaller regional airport in the outskirts of London (Stansted), then took an express train into the heart of London where we had detailed instructions on which lines of the London Underground, or "Tube," to use in order to get us quickly to London Heathrow for our flight home. What transpired sounds like something out of a movie.
At first things went fine, got onto the right line, transferred to the next line, all in keeping with our instructions on getting to Heathrow. However, due to two separate construction projects, as well as a line with a train stoppage due to a signal problem, we were forced to be re-routed two more times! So with only about an hour and a half to spare, Mandy and I were literally and figuratively sweatin' it (it was actually quite hot that day) as we slowly progressed our way to the airport.
We were at one station on the outskirts of town when we heard a muffled announcement about replacement bus service to Heathrow. Almost simultaneously I saw a small sign identifying that stop as the one for said bus service. I made an exclamation to Mandy, grabbed my bags, and hoisted myself out of the train. I turned and saw her, bags in hand ready to join me when the doors slapped shut between us! I'll never forget the scene: both of us staring at each other on opposite sides of the doors, mouths open in total shock. We were separated in London with only about 75 minutes until our flight home!!!
We missed our flight.
Mandy and I hooked up again at the airport; we probably would've made the flight had she not been mis-directed to the wrong terminal. But, oh well. We booked flights home into Vancouver, B.C. instead. It all ended well. A long, tiring, but interesting day(s) - we figured we were awake for over 24 hours.
Wednesday
Bye Bye Venice
Saturday
What? No Museums?
Yesterday was Florence (Firenze) day. We took a very early morning train down to Florence and a late night train back. We were absolutely exhausted by the time we got back to our room.
First things first, we saw the beautiful Duomo with the colored marble carving facade which is truly spectacular. Then we immediately made our way to the world's best gelato down by Santa M. Croce church for the Riso gelato. We each had a nice big serving and knew we'd had the best.
We had made internet reservations for the museum that houses the famous David sculpture, but all did not go well. We had confirmation numbers, order numbers, etc, but apparently not the right paper. So we raced to a nearby internet spot, print out more stuff from the confirmation email and brought it back, and it still did not work. We went back 2 times with different information from the reservation email and it apparently was not correct. We never made it in!!! We were hot, angry, and very bothered. How can you be in Florence and not see a museum?
But the day did get better. We went and consoled ourselves with another helping of the Riso gelato. We figured it was either a consolation prize or else we were having one for "the boys" back home that were waiting for us. (Guys, it tasted really, really, really good.)
I found Italian shoes! 3 pair to be exact; something that was on my list of things to buy here in Italy. The salesman was very charming. Mandy found the perfect leather jacket. We felt much better about our day.
Our feet hurt so very badly after circling the main part of Florence about 3 times, that we actually changed our train reservations for an early train, which meant we got back into Venice around 11:00 p.m. instead of 11:30. We got pretty goofy on the ride home cuz we were so tired. We think the people behind us might have figured we had tourettes syndrome because we kept yelling out °For Chette" (Fork in French), which actually sounds like something we would never say in the US - you can guess. I also made the mistake of telling Mandy I had subscription sunglasses. She figures I get a new pair every month or something. We even took pictures of each other with food in our teeth.
It was good to be back in Venice and rest.
Today we are meandering Venice one last day. We are packing up, and weighing our bags to make sure we don't go over our weight limits. Tomorrow we come home.
It will be good to be home.
Friday
Its a Dirty Trick
We saw a comical sight: a pigeon was walking around the Nice train station with a string tangled around his feet. We figured that his so-called Pigeon "friends" played a trick on him. I can hear it now, "Hey Sam, lets tie Carl's feet together while he is napping!" Thankfully Carl could walk okay and could fly even with his shoe laces tied together. All is well in the world of Carl.
It's a Bunch of Crap!
6/7
Okay, I just got pigeon poopoo all over my hands, sweater and map of Venice. Great! Now Mandy has to hand feed me the cough drops.
Our room was ready in Venice and so were we. We shopped our heads off, got lost about 50 times, had a great meal on our way home - at least we though it was the way home, and finally made it home.