Despite a threatened downpour and lightning at departure time, we left for Paris on time and changed planes, arriving in Venice as planned. At the airport, we met two others from our trip. We took a short bus ride to the water taxi pickup and got a private water taxi to our hotel, arriving at their dock. An interesting way to travel!
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| Gerry boarding the water taxi |
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| Jim in the leather seats |
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| Above and below: views from the lagoon |
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| Above and 2 below: views of the Grand Canal |
We took a short walk around the neighborhood, focusing on how to locate the hotel again! Streets here can be one person wide and signage on the land entry of the hotel was pretty much missing! I took pictures to try to help! We are also very close to a vaporetto stop, the water bus system here.
Our trip leader, Alessandro, offered to lead us to a local restaurant with a traditional (= fish) restaurant for a self-paid dinner and our group of seven all signed up. This is the smallest tour ever at seven, vs. the up to 25 for a small ship sailing. Apparently people started dropping out like crazy after the 11/12 acqua alta where the wind-driven high tides covering over 90% of the city ranged from a couple inches deep to over 3 feet. We had been concerned that the trip might cancel and wondered how it would affect the itinerary, and were pleased that everything continued as originally planned, just with a dinky group, which makes it more personalized.
After 3 nights in Venice, we will hop on a 50 passenger ship (2 groups -- 18 people total) and spend seven days sailing the northwest Adriatic, starting with Pula on the Istrian peninsula and heading north along the coast until we return to Venice. We had done a similar winter Adriatic cruise along the Croatian coast and expect this will be similar.
It is a bit chiller than home, especially in the morning and we hope we brought the right clothing!
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