Venice: Day 3

Awful awful sleep. Neverending stream of mosquitoes, feelings of dampness preventing slumber.

Final day saw espresso, the acquisition of a Team Italia Football hat for Will, serpent necklace for me, and a glass cow for Jim's mom.

We took a trip to the other side of the Rialto, which was much more residential, and full of beautiful personal terraces on rooftops.

We visited the interior of San Marco, wherein we were prohibited from taking pictures AND from walking on the floor. They set up wood planks over the tile to prevent wear, which is both really smart AND a little ridiculous.

We also spent some time at the fountain outside. This is the lion I fell in love with. He was pretty popular with the ladies. I had to wait a good ten minutes before I got to get a picture with him.

We took a picture of the gnome at the pigeon fountain. People loved it. Another tourist actually waved me away from him in order to get a picture for himself. We also re-visitted Chaos Church, which was suddenly chained off to visitors.

We went back to Cafe del Doge, our now favourite espresso place in Venice.

We went to say good-bye to our 200 Year Old Hero.

He was a great landmark for many adventures, including the now-infamous complete disorientation brought on by Chaos Church the previous afternoon. We wondered if maybe the dates were some sort of chisel-typo, but we had no idea who to ask. (He seemed important and we didn't want to accidently case offense.) We also found a unique, unmarked building that was clearly some sort of occultish church in days gone by.

I fell in love with it almost immediately. I'm pretty sure it's a residence now, and I want to live there.

We pre-visited the train station, took the last of our photos then headed to Venezia-Mestre... much too early.

So early, in fact, that we were still hungry. I ate like a normal person. Jim on the other hand.....

He claims it wasn't very good. I'm unsurprised.

The scene we were met with when escorted to our shared quarters on the Euro Rail train:

6 tiny bunk beds in a tiny train car

6 giant suitcases

Top beds that are lying-room only

An entire family of 5 already ensconced in the cabin, plus their 12month old daughter who was not wearing any pants. They were extremely nice and helped Jim and I put our suitcases on the top bunks (as we were assigned), welcomed us nicely, shook hands, etc.

Once we settled in, we discovered we hadn't paid the proper price. Marciano, the ticket-checker, promised to do his utmost to hide it, but warned that we may be asked to pony up at the end of the line. Then he took our passports and left. This completely freaked me out. I thought for sure we were going to be left stranded in a European jail with no proof of Canadian citizenship. Minutes into the journey, Marciano returned and asked us to follow him. I nearly passed out. He lead us down the hallway, through the connecting doors to another car, then motioned to a different door. Turns out, he was moving us into an empty car! He wanted to allow the family we were staying with to stay together (the 5th person was an uncle who bought his ticket late and was put into the cabin next to his family). Being as this cabin was empty, he thought it would be nice to allow us to be alone; just us. So not only did we save about 100 euros on the journey, we got upgraded.

During this exchange, we discovered that ticket checkers are required to hold on to everyone's passports in order to show them all to the various border-guards as we would be travelling across a few (Italy, Switzerland, France). Relieved and palliated, Jim and I finished the bottle of vino we purchased the prior day in Venice, talked for a long time, watched the dark Italian countryside fly by, and eventually tried to get to sleep. But even in private quarters and after a terrible night's sleep, one was able to maintain her traveller's insomnia. I woke at each stop to see where we were, despite knowing we were going to be in transit for more than 12 hours. At one stop, something lurched extra hard, and suddenly the wall next to my face was rattling uncontrollably until I MacGuyvered a method of keeping it steady (involving plastic sheet wrap being stuffed into the crack between the wall and the ceiling.

I was tired, smelly, without passport, completely at the mercy of Rail Europe, but still somehow excited and happy to be exactly where I was.