Arrival
After 1:10 min smooth flight from Dubrovnik, we arrive in Rome on time. We have a 3 hour layover in Rome airport, so we walk around what seems like MILES of duty free shopping. As we are not traveling internationally, we cannot use any of it, but look as we will be coming back through on our way back to Athens in a few days.
We take about a 10 minute walk to terminal one from which our flight will depart. We pass through security and then start to look for a place to have lunch. We end up at the Mercedes-Benz cafe which is pretty empty as it is around noon. Our waitress speaks limited English, but we are able to get menus and order 2 Prosecco’s. Margi gets a ham sandwich which turns out to be prosciutto and I get a salmon sandwich which has cream cheese. After paying, we head to the gate.
At the gate, we find a charging station for Margi’s phone but it is about 20 feet from our seats so we have to keep watching for possible phone theft!! At about 12:40, we get in line for the bus to the plane. Out to the plane and we have two aisle seats but in adjacent rows (14D + 15D). The flight is only 45 minutes and they are literally still serving soft drinks right up until we land. We arrive on-time at 2:30 PM.
In Venice, there are no customs as this was a domestic flight but we have to wait a bit for our luggage. When we walk out of the secured areas into the terminal, we look for blue water taxi signs. We have not reserved a water taxi as they should be readily available. We find the water taxi desk easily and pay our 120 Euros and are told to go to dock 7/8 looking for boat #24.
Walk from water taxi desk to docks is fairly long but there are a series of people movers to an escalator that go down to the docks. We find dock 7/8 and boat #24 pretty easily. Our boat operator is a 20 something young man, who seems most interested in his cell phone (yes, it seems universal). He helps Margi in and I pass the luggage from the to him. He stores the luggage up in front near him and Margi and I sit in a covered area behind. We leave for the dock nearest our hotel (only 50 meters, they say).
Hotel
Hotel Campiello is a Rick Steves recommendation and is on the expensive side of his choices (which are admittedly more budget oriented). The hotel is located two bridges beyond San Marco (one by Bridge of Sighs and next one) and is down an alley way (Calle de Vin) just before the Hotel Savoia. We have agreed to pay cash (Euros) for the entire stay upon check-in so that we get a better rate, plus we get an additional 10% off having used the Rick Steves guidebook (so about $225/nite). The hotel is small but clean, has friendly staff, offers a breakfast with the room, and has an elevator (LOL – After Fresh Sheets). The room is “big city” small but not tight. The bathroom is modern and all marble with a sink, toilet, and bidet. The walk-in shower covers the entire side with a full glass door but oddly has no shelf within the shower for soap or shampoo. The room has a TV, WiFi, and a mini-fridge.
There is also a “balcony” which we had trouble finding at first. Looking out the two windows, we could not see any balcony until we noticed that one window is larger. When we open the window into the room, we see a set of stairs running up to a platform containing a small table and two chairs. This is on on interior court, so there is no view, but it is outside. You just have to fold the bottom portion of the steps into the room to gain access. Unique to say the least.
Day 8 – WEdnesday PM
The water taxi leaves us at the closest dock, which is about 50 yards from the alley way to the hotel. We wheel our bags down the alley way to the entrance, are buzzed in, and meet a friendly English speaking lady at the front desk. After we pay for the room, she gives us a map and we ask for some dinner recommendations and she gives us three. She also points out the small lobby area where the breakfast will be served each morning.
We go up to the room on the second floor and unpack a little. We get my back pack adjusted with the right things and head out. Back by the water at around 4 PM the place is MOBBED. We walk down along the water toward San Marco, looking for a cafe to sit and have a drink. The weather is slightly cool, but sunny, so we want a place in the sun. We found one just past San Marco but it has waiters with white coats (meaning expensive) but we sit anyway. We have 3 Prosecco’s and some “free” chips/pretzels for the bargain price of 30 Euro’s. We enjoy just being in Venice people watching, although most of the people seem to be Asian.
We walk back into San Marco square to a sea of people & street vendors. We decide to walk to the Rialto Bridge. Navigating to the major sites in Venice is fairly easy as the street corners have signs posted above showing which site is in which direction. We get their with no problem, fight the crowds to the top, and take a few pics.
Note: My daughter Amy and her family went to Venice several weeks AFTER we did and did NOT experience the large crowds we saw. So, I guess it depends and maybe mostly depends upon how many cruise ships are in port. She visited AFTER the cruise ship hit a dock in Venice, so maybe that was a factor in the smaller crowds.
We decide to try to find the restaurant that the hotel lady recommended that is close to the Rialto. It becomes a challenge as we walk back and forth where she marked the restaurant on the map, but can’t find it. Finally, Margi DO’VE’s a young lady in a corner gelato shop and she points us down the street to an alley just before the Burger King (yes there is one in Venice). We walk down the narrow alley way, through a couple of turns to a wide area on the Grand Canal but we cannot find the restaurant. As we go to leave, we then see that the restaurant is in this wide area and we have just walked past it. So large signage in Venice!!
We go in and ask if this is Taverna Al Remer. They say yes, so we glance at the menu and book a reservation at 7 PM on Thurs as it is either 7 or 9 PM sitting and we are old farts. We ask for a table in a quiet area as they say there will be music during the evening. We leave and follows signs back to San Marco and our hotel.
Back at the hotel, we ask the lady at the desk to make a reservation for 7:30 or 8:00 for this evening at another of the restaurants she recommended, Trattoria Da Remigio, which is close to the hotel. She calls as we are standing there and she gets us a 7:30 PM reservations. We go up to the room to relax until dinner.
At 7 PM we leave for the restaurant. It is close to the hotel and we have no trouble finding it, so we are a little early for our 7:30 reservation. We are not able to enter early as there is a CHAIN across the doorway!! We walk around the area and window shop until they chain is removed. We enter, ask for reservation from Hotel Campiello, and are seated immediately. Several other people enter at the same time. While the place is not special in terms of appointments, the waiters are older and all wear white coats.
Margi is our wine expert and orders a Montepulciano Vin Noble but the waiter comes back a few minutes later to say they do not have it but offer us another Montepulciano, which they say is equivalent. It turns out to be a Montepulciano that we buy frequently in the US. We call it the “stick” wine because each bottle has a small grape vine on it. We laugh to ourselves and accept the wine. But, we ask for the cork as we don’t expect to finish it.
Margi orders Spaghetti Amatriciana (one of her favorites) and I order Fagato Venezia (liver). We also order a prosciutto appetizer. The appetizer comes and it is a huge plate of prosciutto, so big that the two of us cannot finish it. As it is delicious and we have a fridge in the room, we tell the waiter we want to take it and he returns with an foil wrapper package. Our dinner entries arrive and are GREAT. We savor the food and eat a leisurely meal.
After paying ($98), we pack the prosciutto and bottled wine into my back pack and leave. It is a cool night as we walk back to the hotel and retire for the evening.
Day 9 – Thursday
We get up late and are down to breakfast a little after 9 PM. The small breakfast area is almost full but we find a table. Breakfast is pretty standard, if uninspired, buffet. Fruit, croissants, eggs, cold cuts, cheese, juice, coffee, etc.
After breakfast, we stop at the front desk to ask about the heat in the room, as the evening was cool and we wanted to warm up a bit but could not get the heat to work We are informed that they have turned off the heat for the summer but offer to put a portable heater into our room. We also ask about her recommendations for places to buy gold jewelry (as it is our 50th). Nice lady provides a few suggestions and adds them to our map.
We leave the hotel and head to a Kandinsky exhibit which Margi has found. It is near the Academia and the Guggenheim. We make our way with minimal wrong turns and find the BIG Kandinshy sign on the side of the building. We enter and there is NO line. Turns out that the “Kandinsky” exhibit is actually an exhibit of weaving where weavers take famous paintings, like Kandinsky, Dali, Miro, etc., and make copies of them using intricate weaving techniques. These are wall sized pieces and are fascinating, but not what we expected. Guess you have to read the fine print (in Italian)!! And on top of it all, we had to climb 4 flights to get to the top and work our way back down.
We are trying to figure out where we can change our Venice Museum VOUCHER into a TICKET so we ask the lady at the front desk of the “Kandinsky” exhibit. She isn’t sure, but points us to the Museum of Musical Instruments which is in the same square. We walk over but we check our list of included museums and this one is not included (besides it’s free). Instead, we decide to go the the Peggy Guggenheim Museum, which is near the Academia.
To get to the Guggenheim, we decide to try Google Maps but find the app too smart for us oldsters. We basically don’t know how to interpret the direction it is sending us, so we walk about 10 minutes in the exact opposite direction. Once we realize our error, we walk back to the square by the Kandinsky exhibit. We use our paper map and walk about 5 minutes in the right direction to a large square which is on the path to the Academia Bridge over the Grand Canal.
We find a cafe and stop for coffee and Coke Lite. We sit and relax, watching people go by and a couple of small kids play on a statue in the middle of the square.
After paying (cash only), we walk the last few minutes to the Academia Bridge, which strangely seems to have wooden set of steps over the original stone bridge (conservation??).
It is full of people (tourists) so we fight our way to the top and find a place by the edge to take a few pic’s. Over the bridge, Margi stops to buy a few postcards and I notice a strange sign that talks about mailing the cards at the same shop. We later found out that there are multiple private postal companies that service Venice, so you can mail your cards at the place you by the stamps (the stamps are universal). Odd…
We follow the signs that lead us to the Guggenheim but strangely, the actual entrance is poorly marked, so I pop into the Guggenheim store and ask, to find out that I am an idiot as the entrance is about 20 yards down on the left!! Maybe the lack of signage is because this was Peggy Guggenheim’s residence.
We go in and purchase tickets (Museum pass not valid here). We have to store our bags in lockers. We head into the Garden area, which has art within it but decide to go inside first, so we enter the first (and only) floor. Peggy Guggenheim collected an amazing amount of modern art, so we see Picasso, Kandinsky, Klee, Ernst, and other artists unknown to us. But everything is spectacular but in such a unique setting as this was originally a residence, so some rooms are just normal sized rooms. There are a number of groups of children touring including one group that occupied the floor in one of the farthest most room with a teacher who was trying to engage them . We go outside on the Grand Canal side to a small area containing sculpture. Interestingly, it contains a piece that appears to be an ancient stone carving, which seemed oddly out of place in this modern gallery.
We then pass back through the building out the the Garden area where we entered. There are a number of interesting modern pieces, including one in neon on the garden wall. There is also a special exhibit by an artist names Jean Arp, which we pass through somewhat quickly as his work leaves us a little cold. Guggenheim pics.
Done with the exhibit, we collect our bags and exit, going away from the direction we entered. We go down a public alley way that is actually INSIDE the entrance.
We are looking for a traghetto, which is a traditional gondola that just ferries you back and forth the Grand Canal for 2 Euros. According to Rick Steves, this is a less touristy way go short cut some trips as there are only 4 bridges that go over the Grand Canal. We see the Trachetto sign and walk down an alley way to a simple dock on the Grand Canal. We can see the gondola on the other side, starting its return. Once on our side, I had the gondolier 4 Euros and we get on and sit. A local also enters but he stands. We push off and are across the Grand Canal in just a few minutes which means we have had a cheap, albeit short gondola ride in Venice – LOL
Off the traghetto, we follow the San Marco signs and arrive there as it is only a short distance. We find a sunny cafe in the piazza and have lunch. Margi decides to switch things up and has spaghetti (LOL) and I have a tuna salad. We both enjoy some wine.
After lunch, I go to the Correr Museum which is at one end of San Marco to get our vouchers turned into tickets. As the entrance is up a flight, I leave Margi in the piazza in the sun while I climb up the marble stairs to the ticket office. Once there, I find the office is manned by a confused young lady who explains that the person who can do the appropriate magic to change vouchers into tickets is at lunch and will be back in 30 minutes!! I elect NOT to wait!!
Back down the stairs, I find Margi sitting in the sun. As she rises, she discovers that her shoe has found some gum. I gallantly pull off most of it for her with my hands. Unstuck, we walk back toward the hotel. On the way, we pass the Doge’s Palace and I see another opportunity to change voucher to tickets (ok, maybe this has now become a quest!!). I point Margi to the edge water at the beginning of the Grand Canal and I venture inside the Doge’s Palace ticket office. I am pointed to the Group window and find what seems like an Italian tour guide who has such serious questions that the clerk behind the desk has to consult with colleagues behind the desk and over the phone. After about 7 minutes, everyone is happy and the tour guide walks away smiling. I am next and the lady behind the desk converts my voucher to tickets in a matter of moments and I do NOT have to show a valid id proving that I am old (kind of sad that I look so old, no one needs proof 🙁 )
As there seems to be no line to enter the Doge’s Palace and it is covered by our newly acquired Museum Pass, we decide to go in. This was the seat of Venetian government and the tour also includes the Bridge of Sighs and prison. First, we enter the courtyard and go to the Grand Staircase.
We pass through a number of ornately decorated rooms into the large Hall of the Grand Council with Tintorretto’s Paradise covering one entire wall. Pic’s of Doge’s interior.
We then proceed across the Bridge of Sighs to the Prison. We walk through the cells, supposedly used until 1930!! We go back across the Bridge of Sighs and view the throngs of tourists on the bridge by the Grand Canal that you can view the Bridge of Sighs. Pics of Prison
I exit and find Margi. We walk over the two bridges to our hotel and take a little nap (this vacationing is tiring). After our nap, we head out looking for the jewelry stores, one near San Marco and one near the Rialto Bridge. We find the San Marco store, after passing it once as it is very small. After looking in the window, we walk in and Margi asks for something very specific, a type of ring, I think. Unfortunately, they don’t have anything like what she wants.
Our dinner reservations are near Rialto, so we head out of San Marco Piazza under the Clock Tower. After some looking, we find the TINY place and we have to wait outside for a few minutes as there are two customers in the shop and there is no room for anyone else. Now Margi is looking at bracelets and asks about two in the window. The attendant gets them but they are too small for Margi’s wrist. Another bust.
We are also near a shopping “mall” which has been pointed out by the hotel and by Rick Steves. It is in a converted building that was once a German Exchange building. It is a multi-store array of glitzy shops with a large center atrium. I have to drag Margi in as she is not excited about even window shopping in these upscale, name brand shops. To make matters worse, we walk to the third floor only to find that there is an escalator hidden inside one of the stores. We then try to take the elevator down and find that it does not seem to stop at the floor we are on. We walk down through a distinctly Asian crowd and exit.
It is around 6 PM and we have some time to kill before our reservation we made yesterday. We walk over the Rialto Bridge and find a cafe that is along the Grand Canal. We only want wine so we are directed to tables outside, but along the building. The tables directly on the canal are reserved for people having dinner (at the gauche hour of 6 PM!! – LOL). We have a few prosecco’s and watch the people and the boats on the canal.
Around 7:30 pm, we head to the restaurant, watching for Burger King as our signal to turn left down the alley way. The restaurant is dark and service is slow. As I have done a few times on the trip, I spill a wine and we are charged for the replacement house wine. Margi has pasta with a rabbit ragu and I have black pasta with squid. The food is not great. There is no music as promised when we made the reservation and they added a cover charge on the bill, so we leave no tip. Trattoria Da Remigio is a bust.
We walk back toward the hotel. As we pass through San Marco we hear bands playing at several of the cafes in the piazza. We are full and tired. Back to the hotel and sleep.
Day 10 – Friday
Up and down to breakfast at around 9 AM. There is an American family, mother, father, and two early teen kids next to us but they do not engage.
We ask at the front desk about details for our departure tomorrow. Checkout is 11 AM; they can keep our luggage after we checkout; they can and will book a water taxi for Saturday afternoon. With these details confirmed, we head out.
We have talked about what we will leave to do on Saturday, as rain is predicted. We decide to save indoor activities like Academia and Museum Correr for Saturday. We go to San Marco and get in the line for the Basilica. Line is short and entrance is free. At the door, the guard tells us and a British couple ahead of us that no back packs are allowed inside and we would have to check them. I follow the British guy around to the rear exit of the Basilica and ask a guard there where the luggage check is located. She points to an alley way across the small end of the piazza. I cross to the alley and look for the second door on the right. I get there and the British guy is just in front of me. Check my back pack for free and then back to the entrance where Margi is waiting by the guard and we cut the line into the Basilica.
The Basilica is crowded, especially at the beginning before you enter the church proper. No pictures are allowed (boo!). The Basilica is large, gold, and somewhat dark. We pay an extra 2 Euros each to go behind the alter to see the Golden Alterpiece, depicting religious scenes with gold, ruby’s, emeralds, and pearls. We opt not to do the Treasury nor climb up to the Museum. Exit is to the back of the church.
We decide to do sightseeing in the direction of our dinner reservations for tonight. With multiple map consultations, we find the street but can’t see the actual place. We are looking for Trattoria Al Mascaron but all we can find is a place with a SIMILAR name. We take a picture of the sign on the place with the similar name so that we can ask about it at the hotel.
Walking back toward San Marco, we go by two gondola’s in one of the small canals. We ask if gondolier speaks English, which he does, about the price, 80 Euros for 30 minutes, and that we will NOT be going on the Grand Canal, which is typically very busy. We say yes and climb into a gondola and then into the next one (they are docked side by side) for our “mandatory” ride. We have a very nice ride through small canals. The gondolier points out a few sights and provides us with some random facts (e.g. depth of small canals is 6 feet while depth of Grand Canal is 15 feet; there are 120 churches in Venice). It is still morning and we pass a number of places where commercial and/or government boats are delivering goods and/or picking up trash. Gives you an appreciation of how the canals are really used. We also see how the people operating on the canals cooperate with each other around blind corners (safe to go, no wait, etc). It is also fun to watch the gondoliers navigate by using their feet to push off buildings. I take a selfie of us and the gondolier during the trip. We end where we began but this time we can climb directly out of the gondola onto the steps which are the dock. Gondola Pics
We walk to the Rialto Bridge looking for the Rialto markets, produce and fish. We can’t seem to find at first, so we stop for a coffee and a review of the map. As we are having coffee, we see a canopy over to the right of the square. We pay and head in that direction. We have found the produce part of the market. As we walk along, Margi buys a cellophane tube of spices for arrabbiata. Beyond the produce section is the fish part of the market. This is always fascinating as the fish are there is their natural form. We see scallops in the shell and watch as a fish monger filets a sea bass for a customer. Very fascinating.
We head back to San Marco but this time we head further away from San Marco, passing the alley way to our hotel. Down a few more canals and past some of the crowds, we see a courtyard down an alley way. We walk down and see a restaurant in the sun on the far side of the courtyard. We take a quick look at the 4 language menu (mutli-language menu, especially with pictures, is a bad sign of a tourist trap according to Steves) and we sit down for lunch. Margi has penne arrabbiata and I have calamari friti with coke lite and wine. Nothing spectacular.
After lunch, we head back toward San Marco looking for gelato down along the Grand Canal. End up walking down to far end of San Marco Piazza but along the water and then doubling back along shops on sides of San Marco to find a place. We find one manned by an Asian young lady who is speaking in some Asian language to about 5 older Asian ladies. They are ordering coffee’s and gelato but can’t seem to decide which flavor. Finally, the lady behind the counter looks at me and we order gelatos. Meanwhile one of the older Asian ladies who had moved away from the counter returns and yells over Margi to the server. Margi, who does not suffer idiots, turns and tells her not to yell and the lady backs off. Ugly American, NOT. Manners are manners.
We take our gelatos closer to the Bell Tower in San Marco and sit by one of the pillars on the steps around the piazza. We are sitting by a pillar so that we do not block access to the covered area around the piazza. We people watch, fascinated by the women in high heels, fancy dresses, and generally odd clothing choices. Seeing people dressed to the “nines” while sightseeing is a baffling phenomenon.
Done with our gelatos but still sitting, a man wearing a florescent bib comes up and looks at us. Apparently sitting on the steps is not allowed, so we just nod, get up, and head to our hotel for, guess what?? Yes, a NAP!!! We are beat from walking and walking and walking for days and days and we are also homesick. Next time, 10 day limit!!
We leave the hotel at about 5:30 PM and go toward where our restaurant for this evening. We have discussed our confusion about the restaurant with a similar name with the man at the hotel desk and he has assured us that they are two different restaurants and our restaurant is indeed in the same block. On our way, we walk along the “other” side of San Marco Piazza to see those shops. Margi spots a shop with Murano glass and we go in to buy a perfume bottle for 16 Euros.
We walk through the “Rialto” exit from San Marco, looking for an appliance store that we have been using as a landmark to get to our destination. Somehow, we seem to turn down a wrong street but eventually get our bearings again.
We arrive at a square just before where the restaurant should be and sit down at a cafe in the sun to have a drink. I leave Margi to order drinks, and to down to hunt for our restaurant. I again walk down and back on the street and can’t find it, so I finally Do’ve a shop owner, pointing to the name the hotel written on my map. He points me back down the street and I finally find a SMALL sign for our restaurant.
I go back to Margi with the sweet taste of success (little victories are important at my age) to find that she has not seen a waiter in the 10 minutes I have been gone. As we are in no hurry, Margi does internet thing and I write in my journal. Eventually, we see a waiter getting payments from someone near us and we signal him. He comes and Margi orders a prosecco and I get a house red. We sit and watch the people in the square, both locals and tourists. At about 7:15, we pay 10 Euros and leave.
We walk down a different side street as there is still a few minutes until our reservation. The restaurant was not open when I went past some 40 minutes ago, so we window shop a bit. When we get to the restaurant, there are already people inside. We have a reservation so we are seated immediately.
Waiter is a short, plump, white haired guy with an apron on and seems like he might be the owner. He has a great sense of humor. We order water and a liter of the house red. I ask where the bathroom is and he says down two canals just past a pink gondola!! Margi orders spaghetti pompadoro with basil and I get ear lobe pasta with gorgonzola and asparagus. We also get bread. There is a French couple behind us, three Germans in front of us, and two couples across the small room who are American. Our dinner arrives and is delicious. We can’t finish our entree’s, so no dessert. As we leave, I flash my Syracuse shirt to the two American couples and add “Go Cuse”.
LOL Leisurely walk back to San Marco which is much less populated than we have seen and the bands at the cafe’s seem to be packing up. Back to hotel to pack. We leave tomorrow.
Day 11 – Saturday
Margi gets up around 8 AM after not sleeping well. I shower and shave as Margi packs packs her suitcase. I decide to pack after breakfast. We go down to the standard breakfast. As promised, we can see that it is raining out the dining area windows. We have to be out of our room by 11 AM but do not take the water taxi to the airport until 4:30 PM. Our major agenda for today, in the rain, is to visit the Academia and then the Museum Correr, which will probably NOT take up the entire day. So we decide to return to our room after breakfast, finish packing, and wait for 11 AM checkout time.
By 10:40, we are bored so we get all our luggage (or so we think) and head to the front desk to checkout. As we have pre-paid for the hotel, this involves just turning in our card key and leaving our luggage next to several others by the front desk.
We get outside and it is raining (again/still) so we get out our umbrellas and head toward San Marco. Instead of crossing San Marco in the open, we, along with every other tourist out today, stay under the covered walkway on the edges where all the shops and cafes are located. It is slow going through the crowds.
We head off to the Academia which we passed on the first day when we visited the Peggy Guggenheim Museum. Crossing the Academia Bridge, the Academia is directly in front of us but we need to go either left or right to find the entrance. I guess left and so we walk ALL THE WAY AROUND the building in the rain to find that right was the right choice. This is a fore shadowing of the day to come.
We get inside with no line and go up to the ticket desk. I try to use my Venice Museum pass but find out that entrance is FREE. We do have to store my back pack before we go up to the galleries. As we start to put umbrellas into the back pack and remove water and other essential, Margi realizes that she does NOT have her cell phone!! She has apparently forgotten it on the side table in our hotel room. After a bit of a heated debate, I decide to walk BACK to the hotel to retrieve the phone.
So Margi waits on the benches on the inside of the Academia lobby and I take off in the rain for the hotel. Walking alone and as fast as my little old legs will take me, I make better time than when we came, but the narrow alley ways are crowded at times, so I get a little frustrated and maybe a little rude (sorry to everyone I bumped). At San Marco, I cut across the open piazza which is virtually empty in the rain. Back at the hotel, I tell the front desk person that I need to go up to my former room to retrieve Margi’s cell phone. He points at the now empty dining area and there is the cell phone, USB cord, USB plug, and electrical converter out on a table!! Along with Margi’s cell phone & stuff are two of my shirts and one pair of my jeans. OOPS, I guess we all make mistakes. 🙂 I request a bag for the stuff and proceed to hoof it back to the Academia, still in the rain. More apologies for bumping people (you??).
Back at the Academia, there is now a LONG line OUTSIDE, so I just go in the exit door, confident that I have my “ticket” that we got earlier. No one challenges me. The total trip took about 40 minutes and I am soaked in sweat.
I find Margi patiently waiting and happy that she has her phone. Now we again start to pack up stuff in my back pack to put into a locker, but we then notice that we do not have a 1 Euro coin for the locker. The lady at the souvenir desk refuses to make change for a 20 Euro bill, so we go up with my back pack in hand. The guard at the top of the stairs tells me that I must wear the back pack on my front and not my back. I assume this will make it less likely for me to bump someone with it.
Once inside the galleries, we see lots of Renaissance art by artists that we have never heard of. Grand paintings that are huge. The first room in the gallery must have been some sort of ballroom or gathering place as it is huge with a very ornate ceiling. We wonder through the gallery and find a special exhibit of Da Vinci drawings, including vitruvian man. Some of the drawings are so small that when one person is viewing them, others can’t really see. Also, this part of the museum has the most people, so going here is slow.
While in the museum, we get to the magical time when we are 24 hours before our business class flight from Athens to JFK on Sunday. Despite the large cost of business class tickets, British Airways has the quaint policy that you cannot actually pick your seats earlier than 24 hours before the departure UNLESS you pay them an additional several hundred per seat!! So, when the appointed hour comes, we find a seat in one of the hallways and use the BA app on Margi’s phone to book our seats. Surprise, we can’t find two together, so we book two in the same row and hope we can work something out at the airport.
We depart from the Academia and decide it must be time to eat so we set out to find a nice INSIDE place. Instead of heading back over the Academia Bridge, we walk behind the Academia toward the water. At the water, we turn right and walk down to find what appears to be a nice restaurant. We walk in and are pleased to get seats in the front window in a place that is nicely heated (can you say cold and rainy outside). There are some other people in the restaurant.
We start with two prosecco’s and eventually share a third. They bring bread. Margi orders just an insalata mista and I get a quartro fromage pizza. The food comes after just a small wait and we eat a leisurely meal, while watching the view out the front window. As we are sitting inside, the seats outside under a canopy along the building start to fill up, despite the aforementioned cold and rainy weather. As everyone outside is facing away from the building, we are effectively looking over their shoulders. It is fascinating how much food some people can consume, but I guess that plays against all the walking that they do.
We nurse our meal and drinks a little in hopes that the rain will stop. Finally we pay the check, pack our gear, and head back toward the Academia Bridge. Our destination is the Museum Correr just at the edge of San Marco piazza. The rain starts and stops and is generally light, just enough to make things unpleasant.
At the Museum Corror, we are able to use our Venice Museum card (hurrah). But, we still need to store my back pack in a locker, but these are free. This museum contains artifacts from the city of Venice and was the palace where the rulers lived. Each room is decorated and they multi-language cards in each describing the contents. The best part, however, is that it is not raining inside!! We walk around, taking some pics and generally enjoying the museum.
At the end, we pick up our bags, suit up for the weather, and head out. As we are at San Marco, we walk around the covered perimeter and window shop, along with all the crowds. We get to the place in San Marco where you head toward the Rialto Bridge and head down a few streets. We go off on one of the side streets, just looking for a place to have a coffee (as it must now be an hour and a half since we have last eaten). After passing a few places that seem to be catering to lunch (at 3 PM), we find a place and, confirming that we only want coffee, we sit. We both have coffee and Margi has a tiramisu, which we share. Tiramisu is ok, but not as good as Margi’s!! We pay and leave.
As it is after 3:30, raining, and we are DONE with window shopping, we head back to our hotel, deciding to wait for our water taxi departure time in the hotel lobby. Back at the hotel, I get my luggage and stuff my two shirts and jeans into the suitcase. At about 4:20 PM, we go to the front desk and the man call the water taxi company to get the details of what water taxi number that will take us to the boat.
We leave the hotel for the nearby “taxi” dock, looking for Marco in boat 233. We wait about 10 minutes but Marco does show up and we load our luggage and head for the airport. Ariveiderci Venice.
At the Venice airport, we pay the boat operator 120 Euros and unload our luggage to the dock. Then we take the reverse trip from the docks, up the escalator, and then down the long walkway with the people movers. But this time, we decide to get a free luggage cart which means we CAN’T use the people movers and have to walk the whole length. This day just keeps getting better and better.
In the airport, we have trouble finding how to check-in to our Alitalia flight. As we fumble at the kiosk, a nice young attendant lady comes and helps us get printed boarding passes but, alas, we still have to stand in line to check our luggage. There is just one LONG line for Alitalia check-in but there is a shorter one for luggage check-in only, so we get in that line. But it is still slow as only two Alitalia ladies are handing the entire crowd. Our luggage is checked through to Athens.
As seems to be common in Europe, the gate is not identified until about 1 hour before departure time. The terminal is not very large and is packed. We find 2 seats together at one end of the terminal. Margi spots a cell phone charging kiosk about 30 feet from our seats, so she plugs in and we keep watch for iPhone thieves. We also watch the departure board, which is also within sight, to see what gate our flight will use. As promised, about one hour before the flight, our gate is posted and I get up to see exactly where it is. In a pleasant change of luck today, it is the gate closest to our current seats. Bonus…
Boarding is basically a mad rush, not by rows, as we are again boarding a bus to go out to the plane on the tarmac. It is raining pretty steadily but boarding the bus if no problem because the bus is under cover. When we get to the plane, there is boarding from both the front and back of the plane. But, the stairs up for both are NOT covered, so as the line backs up, people are standing in the rain waiting to get inside. As we have only our small carry on’s, we decide to wait in the bus until the backups decrease to zero, particularly because our umbrellas are PACKED in our luggage. We get wet getting into the plane but not as soaked as some.
The plane leave a few minutes late but we arrive in Rome on time, which makes us happy, as we have only about 1:20 layover. The plane parks out on the tarmac and we leave the plane and board a bus to the terminal. At least this time, it is not raining.
In Rome, we enter the terminal and go up an escalator and find a departures screen to look for the gate for our Alitalia flight to Athens. The departures screen is actually a series of screens the circle a pillar so we have to walk around it to find our flight. We find our gate number but have to walk to the end of section B, which is a bit of a walk. On the way, we stop and pick up some snacks, as they only provided drinks on the flight from Venice as it was a very short flight.
Boarding is a bus to the plane. It is a pleasant evening in Rome, spoiled only by the small of jet fuel as we walk up the stairs into the plane. We both have aisle seats in the same row. The plane is not full and Margi lucks out with no one in the middle. I am not so lucky.
Flight is uneventful and we arrive in Athens on time, slightly after midnight. We go through passport control quickly and our luggage arrives without any delay. We go outside and across the street to Sofitel Hotel, which we had scoped out when we first arrived in Athens twelve days ago. We have prepaid for the hotel, so check-in is no problem. We schedule our breakfast and go up to our modern, glitzy hotel room. We do minimal unpacking and go back down to lounge to get a bite to eat. We shared a Greek Salad and both had wine.
Day 12 – Sunday
We get up around 9 and go down to fancy buffet breakfast, for 18 Euros each. After breakfast, we go back up to room and do our final packing. Our flight is at 1:30, so we checkout around 11:30 and walk across to the terminal. Check-in for business class is quick and we go to the lounge and relax until departure time. The flight to Heathrow is just as when we arrived, that is, business class was the same basic seats with no one sitting in the middle seat. Food service is good.
We arrive in Heathrow on time after our 3 hour flight. We find our way to the now familiar lounge and eat and drink as we wait. We have gone down to the end of the lounge, near the computer stations in order to find a USB charging port. This also puts us near a small child playroom that is occupied a young British couple and their energetic toddler who provides us with some free entertainment as he runs around the lounge with one parent or the other trailing behind.
We board on time. We have been asking every BA person we find about our unhappy apart seating but with no success. When we are on the plane, I have an inside seat and Margi has a window. I ask the young-ish business man in the seat next to me if he would be willing to switch with my wife, taking her window seat. He happily agrees and Margi and I are together for our return flight to JFK.
We arrive in JFK and get through passport control without any issues. Snag our luggage and call the Parking Lot to have the shuttle come. Shuttle comes quickly, we pay, and head home, arriving in Goshen around midnight.
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