Day Ten -- Travel Day

I had a wakeful night but my sister, who lives in Kansas, slept well. I awoke with a start at 3 a.m. thinking someone had pounded on our door.  I jumped out of bed and looked through the peephole and saw no one. In my sleepy brain I wondered who was playing "knock and run" at 3 a.m. Then I realized that we had left the door to the terrace open and the wind was causing it to bang open and shut. I closed the door and crawled back in bed. I fell back to sleep and then the shutters for the terrace door began to bang against the door.  I got up and fought the shutters against the wind and got them closed. I tried to fall back to sleep but the wind was whipping against our room on the hill. Then the shutters on the next room began to bang against our wall. Perhaps it was an empty room or our neighbors were wearing earplugs but they never secured the shutter. For the rest of the night it banged. I could hear glass shatter on the large terrace where we ate breakfast. I spent the rest of the night imagining the roof blowing off our room. Meanwhile, Gayle slept.  In the morning she told me that 40 m.p.h. winds are nothing. 

We got up in time to make our train. We hired some strong, young man to carry our bags down the hill. Lisa and Lorena brought our breakfast to our room because there was no way to sit on the terrace and eat. In fact, they were busy cleaning up all the broken things on the terrace.

We had to take four different trains to get from Vernazza to Venice. We worried about the quick changes we had to make but Gayle and I are a good team. Our day was uneventful and we pulled into Venezia Saint Lucia right on time. We stopped in the tourist shop and bought San Marco passes and 72 hour vaporetto passes. We boarded the fast vaporetto and headed to the Rialto Bridge stop. We took turns watching the bags so that each of us could look at the glory of Venice.

 

We are staying at the Hotel Rialto, on the Grand Canal right next to the bridge. We have a corner room with four windows and a canal view. It was our splurge and we are thoroughly enjoying it.

 

We headed out pretty quickly to take a quick look at St. Mark's Square. On the vaporetto ride over we thought we saw St. Mark's Basilica as we neared the Accademia Bridge. We jumped off the boat to take some photos. Then Gayle realized that it wasn't St. Mark's because it was on the wrong side of the canal. We consulted the map, realized our mistake and caught the next boat to San Marco. Venice is filled with beautiful, magnificent churches.

 

St. Mark's Square is magical, especially in the setting sun. We walked past the Doge's Palace; admired the two columns (one topped with a winged lion and the other with St. Theodore battling a crocodile); watched the bronze men on top of the clock tower swing their clappers to announce 8 p.m.; marveled at the opulence on the facade of St. Mark's Basilica; and took way too many photos. 

 

The orchestras were playing at a couple of the outdoor cafes. We contemplated sitting down at one of them until we saw their prices. We went to the one cafe without an orchestra and without a cover charge but close enough to enjoy the music. They played the theme from "Dr. Zhivago"and every song from the "Sound of Music." Some people danced on the square. It was magical.

We found our vaporetto back to our hotel. Gayle made skip-the-line timed reservations for St. Mark's Basilica for tomorrow and we went to bed smiling. We are in Venice!