Venice

Sunday 18^th September 2011

We got up at 7.00am yesterday to get ready to leave Bocca di Magra and for our 4 hour journey to Padova. We stopped at an autogrill for a cold drink along the way and arrived here at about midday. We took all our stuff, which seems to be increasing, up to our room and then decided to take what we were told was a 10 minute drive to Brenta Riviera which contains heaps of Venetian Villa’s that are apparently beautiful. Well that was a mistake, Ruby got a bit confused and when she didn’t get us where we wanted to be we turned her off and tried using the signs as a guide, once again we were let down. They have signs to places and then all of a sudden they don’t give you anything and there are roads going every which way. When we then got lost using those we tried to turn Ruby back on to get us home but we couldn’t get her going at all. Eventually we managed to find our way back to the hotel which I think was pure luck. We’d left at 2.00 but didn’t get back until 3:45 so that was a long 10 minutes where we didn’t get to see much at all because we were too busy trying to concentrate on signs. Anyway it gave us a chance to rest and catch up on some stuff and look for our next accommodation, etc. After trying for a while to get Ruby going again Kim remembered a little trick to reset her and all is good again. We ordered in room service which was hard enough to get for one reason or another and then it arrived and it was cold. Not our best day but we’re not complaining, we’re in Italy.

Woke early again, out of habit now I think but wanted to get an early start anyway to head into Venice. By the time we got ready and went down for breakfast we walked to the station to get the 8.36am only to find the trains were on strike. They have normal slow trains and they have fast trains and it was the slow trains that were on strike so luckily we were still able to get there. The fast train, which was about 3 times the price, didn’t leave until 9.00am so we arrived at 9.30am and hit the ground running. We wandered through the streets of Venice looking in the shops and at all the sights until about 3.30pm and only stopped once to sit down to view our map. We were pretty exhausted by this time and hungry to boot so we found a little Pizzeria on the way back to the station to have something to eat. We then caught the 4:50pm back and was back in our room by 5:30pm.