We ended up getting a brand new Toyota Auris which is the European name for the Prius. What a great little commuter car - and, no, I'm not going to get one!! We set the navigation for Piazzale Roma in Venezia and off we went! Everyone was so concerned about us driving in Italy but, quite frankly, it was no big deal. You just have to pay attention rather than play on your cell phone, like most Italians do, and everything is fine.
Everything about the Autostrada is what American highways should be. Perfectly smooth, well marked lanes, clean, fast, amazing rest areas that are super easy to get into. Also, each rest area has huge gas stations, excellent, clean toilets, good grocery stores, shops selling amazing sandwiches, pizza, etc. It's the way it should be.
The drive out of Firenze wound into the mountains a bit and, at one point in time, we had the choice of taking the "panoramica" way or the direct way. We decided to stick with the proper English nav-chick who took us the direct way. Well, the direct way ended up being a brand-new highway with a 2.6km tunnel right under the Appenines....the tunnel just went on and on and on. As I was typing this, I decided to look it up to learn a little about it. Come to find out, it was recently completed using the world's largest tunnel boring machine and is currently the record-holder for the longest tunnel bored by this machine - soon to be challenged by the Alaskan Way Project in Seattle and another project in St. Petersburg. For those interested, here's a link to the article I read about this: Tunnel Info
Once we got out of the mountains, it was flat, green farmland as far as the eye could see. It reminded me a lot of the Willamette Valley in Oregon except for the scattered church spire and remnants of Medieval times that would pop up here and there. I set the cruise control to the speed limit of 130kph and just relaxed. Even at that speed, there would be some of the faster cars like Mercedes, Alfa Romeo Guliettas, Porsches and BMWs that would fly by like I was standing still. The Italians are so nice that they monitor the speed on the autostrada using speed cameras that calculate the time it takes you to go between the two cameras set kilometers apart. I say that they're nice because they warn you ahead of time with signs saying that you're entering into a "controlled zone". Awesome!!
There was some confusion when we booked our car rental online - the closest that they would allow us to drop off the car was at Venice's Marco Polo Airport which is on the mainland and a long taxi ride from Venice proper. Our host at the apartment where we were staying insisted that we could drop the car at Piazzale Roma which is a huge parking garage where the bridge ends in Venice. We called Hertz numerous times and were told that that particular office was closed on Sunday but, for an extra 50 Euro, we could just leave the car in the garage at Pia Roma. We opted to pay because we didn't want to deal with getting a taxi and schlepping our luggage around. As luck would have it, there was a huge "Dragonboat" Regatta that day in Venice and all the vaporettos and taxis were shut down for the first half of the day so Hertz decided to open their office to allow people to rent cars who needed to get out of town. Sandra, in her most persuasive way, talked the car rental dude into receiving our car.
We met Daniella, our apartment host, at the designated spot, exchanged greetings, picked up our vaporetto passes and hopped on one for the ride to her "district". If you've never been to Venice, it is an assault on the senses that has to be experienced in person. Everywhere you looked there was some kind of boat bustling about on the Grand Canal; exquisitely beautiful private water taxis, work boats/barges with cranes on them, vaporettos, private boats, tour boats, etc. all churning up the water into a turbulent, milky-green, choppy, mess all day long.
The vaporetto stopped at Guideca Palanca and we made our way to Daniella's apartment. Palanca is on an island across from Venice proper where it is super quiet and quite a bit newer. The apartment was stunning!!! I'll let the video speak for itself. We are already considering coming back to Venice and staying a couple weeks in Daniella's apartment sometime next year. Daniella gave us advice on her apartment, suggestions for dinners in Venice (she gave us directions to the best Zuppa di Pesce in Venice) and bid us farewell. Wonderful lady and she really enjoyed practicing her English with us.
Video of Apartment in Venice
A couple beers were cracked and enjoyed in the apartment and then it was off to explore Venezia!!! The vaporetto comes every 9 minutes and takes you straight across the channel into the city so, in mere minutes, we were off on our way to find Piazza San Marco or St. Mark's Square which is, arguably, the most famous place in Venice. We meandered through busy shop-lined walkways and single-filed paths between medieval 4 story buildings back and forth, over canals filled with the obligatory gondolas, through tunnels, under buildings, past teeny-tiny restaurants and bars and, all of a sudden.......we were in the middle of the HUGE St. Pigeon Square!!!!!
St. Pigeon Square is massive - especially considering everything else in Venice seems so cramped. From it's earliest beginning in about the 12th century, the Piazza and the surrounding buildings have been the center of religious, political and organizational administration of Venice. We decided to sit, have a glass of wine and watch the tourists with their selfie-sticks wade through the pigeons and create memories for themselves - they, in turn, were creating memories for us! The same immigrants who were selling selfie-sticks, laser lights, and those nasty rubber squishy balls to the tourists in Rome and Florence were here as well. The difference, though, was that they were feeding the pigeons what looked liked breakfast cereal and getting the pigeons to land on the tourists arms, head and shoulders for picture opportunities and a little cash in their pockets. NASTY!
We left St. Pigeon Square and decided to try to find the restaurant Daniella told us about that had the best fish soup in Venice. Needless to say, we got lost and ended up walking about 2 miles in the WRONG direction. We finally gave up on GPS which didn't work very well in all the small walkways, and just asked for directions. We ended up in the approximate locale but couldn't find it. We decided to find a restaurant close to our vaporetto stop and have some dinner there. Dinner was good - not the best we've had - but the view of the channel was amazing. As we were sitting there, a few raindrops fell. Then a few more. Then it started to really come down. We did not have the 3 umbrellas or 2 ponchos that we bought for rain with us as it was sunny when we got to Venice.
The rain never let up. We finally had to make a mad dash for the vaporetto stop after dinner then get off and slosh our way to the apartment. We were completely soaked once we got there. What a great start to our short visit to Venice!!
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteLove reading these Dave. Takes me back like it was yesterday. Thank you!
ReplyDelete