Venice & Bologna

We haven’t posted in a few days due to lack of internet and photo import problems but all is well now so here is some catching up…

Venice

The trip from Verona to Venice took only a little over an hour by train.  We passed through green fields, orchards, and vineyards.  The last few minutes were a 1.5 km creep along a narrow causeway taking us into the city of islands (118 islands to be exact).  You don’t really see the city until you walk out of the train station onto the Grand Canal.

We had a little over an hour to soak up the atmosphere on the steps of the station.  We had to wait until the vaperetti (water buses) started to operate after the pilots completed a three-hour strike.  A strike by the vaperetti can be quite devastating in a city without roads.  Eventually we made our way to St. Mark’s Square and found our hotel after a five minute walk through the narrow alleys using Deborah’s phone GPS.  (Thank you Mike for the tip on using the cell phone GPS without having the costly data roaming turned on!)

Deborah looking out our Hotel window

Walking in Venice is quite challenging.  It is a maze of canals and narrow walkways.  It really makes for some very interesting exploring and lends itself to great photo shots.  Nothing is on a grid and the islands are not all connected by bridges.  We came across more than one person completely lost.  One night we were approached by four folks who could not find their hotel after imbibing in one too many with their dinner.  We weren’t able to help them and left them giggling and crying.  We didn’t go anywhere without a map in hand. 

Evening walks looking for the "just" the right restaurant and bridge for a picture

Rush Hour in Venice

Venice is an expensive city to live or travel in.  It also caters to the rich.  Deborah enjoyed seeing the shops specializing in all the most exclusive fashion houses of Europe.  Unlucky (lucky?) for her she didn’t want to overload her pack for the walking bit yet to come.  We knew it was going to be expensive when it cost $2 to have a pee in the train station and the walkways were made of marble.  September is the first month of the fall prime travel season.  July and August are too hot but prices are more reasonable we are told. 

We did the usual tourist things.  Saw lots of picturesque scenes of water, boats and old buildings.  We had to say no to lots of beggars and aggressive “no’s” to guys selling blue-light things you throw in the air. We took a walking tour of the city that included the St. Mark’s cathedral built in 100 AD.  We also saw the Santa Maria del Giglio church across from our hotel and the Peggy Guggenheim Art Collection amongst others.  Although these names meant nothing to me before our tour they were no less impressive.  We also took a Grand Canal tour and experienced Venice by water.  The thing that stood out for us was the architecture.  Every period of European architecture is represented here.  Pisa has nothing on Venice with its one leaning tower.  All the buildings in Venice lean.  I guess that is what happens when you build large buildings on wet sand.  I can just hear them back in the day, “lets build a huge church on this soggy spot and lets use lots of marble and limestone, it isn’t that heavy.”  Everything is sinking.  St. Mark’s Square flooded at high tide.  You walk on the marble square and all of a sudden the seawater started bubbling up from the drains.  We had a lightening and thunderstorm our first night and that may have contributed to the flood since locals said it doesn’t always do that.

St. Mark's Square at High Tide

One of the cooler Venice experiences was attending a concert featuring the music of Vivaldi.  I must admit out of the 1200 plus tunes on my IPod, I don’t have any Vivaldi, and most likely never will but… to sit in a small concert hall, built 1000 years ago and listen to music composed 400 years ago, just down the street, was truly an amazing experience.  Surprisingly I recognized much of the music but not by name.

The picture doesn't do justice to the flying fingered fiddler.

View of Grand Canal from the Rialto Bridge.

No building is square.

People watching was a huge highlight.  There were folks and languages spoken from all over the world.  Clearly it is a destination for many and the fact the Mediterranean cruise ships call daily makes for a very eclectic group of visitors. English is still a language most Venetians are fluent in and there are no language barriers to getting around.  Great food and good wine rounded out the experience and after two sleeps it was time to move on.

We decided to visit Bologna for our one unscheduled day before we joined the rest of the group in Riccione for the start of the ride.  It was a short one-hour train ride from Venice to Bologna and then a 2.5-hour hop the next day to Riccione.

… speaking of the bike riding…. We were sitting in a garden in Venice, waiting for our canal boat tour, when I heard an Aussie accent asking a group if they were from Canada.  They said yes and she replied that she was too, an Aussie currently living in Whistler.  I interjected and said she should have just said she had a Whistler accent.  After a bit of chitchat it turned out that she and her 10 friends from Whistler were headed to Riccione to cycle as well.  They warmed up by hiking the Dolomites in northern Italy the week before.  Eventually I saw her other friends, all tall walking sticks with weathered fit faces… I think we are in a world of trouble if we are expected to keep up with these folks.

Bologna

We only had one night and an afternoon in Bologna.   It is a university town with all kinds of young people populating the many squares drinking coffee and eating gelato.  We joined them for some leisurely time in the afternoon.  When it came to dinner I thought we would be eating Bologna’s specialty, baloney but it turns out it is Bolognese sauce.  We had a great dinner of Tagliatelle Bolognese in a sidewalk café.

Caught an 11:30 am train (I am now a Trenitalia account holder) to Ricionne and joined our biking friends at the Belvedere Bike Hotel.  We were personally greeted upon our arrival, ushered to the pool for lunch and drinks, and given the details of the biking week.  Our room is on the top floor with a balcony overlooking the Adriatic.  I think I can see Croatia.

Off to dinner and drinks, more to come…