Arrive in Venice

The view outside our hotel

After a stop in Milan to change planes, we arrived at the Venice Airport around 9:30 pm on the 26th, having left at 7:40 pm on the 25th from Phoenix.  Once you get down to the main floor, there is a wall of vendor windows on the left hand wall, and one of them is for the water taxi.  It wasn't expensive, but would take about an hour.

Once you leave the airport from the side exit, you have to walk for a while on the sidewalk you reach from that door; with the chain link fence on your left, and the road on your right.  Then you turn left down a ramp,  and walk some more to get down to where the water taxi will pick you up.  It was a simple task, and the taxi came just as planned.

It surprised me how long it took, even though I thought I knew this ahead of time.  When we finally arrived, it began to feel very surreal to me that  we were in VENICE - it's always be such a famous picture in our heads, and to step foot on land was amazing.  I had thought I wasn't excited about this.  Now I was fascinated.

Finding our hotel became a challenge of the magnitude you expect from reality tv shows.  Dragging our bags behind us on cobbled streets that were not meant for "rolly luggage", no street signs and no clue of how to get to Saint Marks Square.  At this point, it was about 11:30 at night, the day after Christmas, and that meant dark and cold.  We were tired, and just wanted some glimmer of hope that we could find our way.

Venice was SO SO QUIET and empty.  It was really quite stunning.  The loud echo of our own luggage being dragged was all we heard, as we went over small bridge after small bridge.  It was disturbing; where were all the people?  At one point I remember going over one small bridge in the dark, and I was able to look across the small canal, past another empty bridge, to a third; where a lone couple from our same water taxi was dragging their bags, trying to solve the same puzzle we were.  I felt like we were in a scene out of Labyrinth.

Finally, by sheer luck, we found Saint Marks Square; but we still couldn't tell where to go for our hotel.  In the fog, we saw there were 3 people ahead of us; they were policemen, standing together, smoking.  I walked up to one, and asked as nicely as I could if he knew where our hotel was, showing him the information of the name and address.

He took a looong drag off his cigarette, blew it out just as slowly into the fog, nodded his head and put his arm out expansively and said in a grand voice, "Turn right.  ALLLWAYS Turn right."

Then he turned back to his friends.  I was dismissed.

I went back to Michelle, and we both had mixed emotions of despair and amusement.  Finally, we found our hotel, checked in, and then went outside for a quick cigarette, and to take our first look at Venice when we weren't dragging luggage and feeling completely lost. 

As we sat on the steps that went up to the nearest little bridge, the Saint Mark's Square clock began to chime midnight.

Bong...

Bong...

Bong...

Bong...

Bong...

Bong...

Up through 12, this was expected.  But we got 12, and it kept on ringing;

Bong...

Bong...

Bong...

Bong...

It was the last straw of our long day.  We began to laugh.  We laughed in that way you do when you have no idea what's going on, and are dead tired, and out of place.  We laughed till our stomachs hurt and we had tears in our eyes.  We eventually lost count of the "Bongs" and went inside, and fell asleep for the first time in Italy, wondering what the next day would bring us.