Slow boat to China
Sunday, August 07, 2005
Well, we hope we’re going to get to Venice tonight! We took a train that the ticket person told us gets in at 1.38 pm… well in fact it actually gets in at 16.38 so I wonder if he forgot to write down the 6… anyway, that’s all fine, hopefully there will still be some accommodation in Venice by then. But now, an hour out of Rome (we stopped there for ½ an hour on the way) we have stopped in the middle of nowhere with ‘technical problems’. I picked up that much from the Italian announcement that they made, then checked with the people in our little compartment who confirmed this and said that we supposedly wouldn’t be long. Well it’s been a good 10 minutes so far… the scariest bit was when a ‘fast train’ went by and totally shook the train! Really noisy too. Ohh, now we’re moving… hopefully it’s all okay then! Maarty is reading his Bill Bryson book ‘Neither here nor there’. Really funny and a fantastic read as we’re going through Europe as it’s all about his adventures on the continent. Great because we’ve had so many of the same experiences. Interesting to note that apparently according to Bill Bryson that Naples has ‘become practically Ungovernable’, and he too couldn’t find a single good thing about the city either, such a shame, and this was written in 1991…We’re kind of sharing the book – we only have one so we try to have one read while the other is on the computer. Next time I find an English book I’m totally buying it. At one stage in Bern I got all excited because I thought I had found a new Dan Brown book but could only find it in French. But alas, it was Angels and Demons just with a different title. Gutted.
Love at First Sight
Well, we walked out of the train station having secured accommodation for one night at a hotel not far away, and I was in love. I’m not sure if it’s because of the stark contrast to Naples, ie it was clean, or the fact that the first view out of the station is the Grand Canal, or, I could go on. But anyway, we grabbed our jackets (‘cause yes, it was actually raining, and a little chilly – about 17degrees or so) and walked the supposed 10 minutes to our hotel. It actually turned out to be a 5 minute walk, which was even better, and we even spied a kebab shop on the way! We spent about 10 minutes in our room before returning to the streets of Venice, and realised that, for the first time in Italy, we were going to be safe as we walked across each street… there are no cars here. Yay! We decided just to go wandering, and we wandered for an hour or so (after eating our average kebab… not quite like the German ones I fear, but it put the hunger away for a couple of hours) before we decided we’d better look at the map to figure out where we were. Venice just happens to be a city that you can get very lost in, very easily. After about 10 minutes of studying the map, Maarty finally found which church we were standing in front of, and we realised we weren’t far from the Grand Canal at all, so made our way there. Lot’s and lots of people, shops, restaurants etc… and this was at 9pm on a Sunday! I figured that the best way of getting back to the hotel was to follow the Grand Canal to the train station, and we knew the way from there. Only thing is, that there aren’t walk ways along the whole of the Canal… so you have to keep turning away, then you spy the water again and go back down to it, only to realise that although the street (or alley less than 2 people wide!) that you’re going down goes to the water, but doesn’t then turn around the corner and go along the water, so you have to back track. So what I guess I’m trying to say, is that is can take you a good hour to walk a couple of hundred metres ‘as the crow flies’. Anyway, we made it back while it was still light and had a bit of time out at the hotel. We then headed back out for a night walk (we seem to have a habit of doing this…) and discovered that, at 10.30pm the shops were still all open! We have found through our 5ish weeks of travelling so far that cities are so different by day and by night. They are so much more vibrant by night – all the personality comes out. And you may say that cities are like that at home too, and I’m sure they are, but when you are a local you don’t see it quite the same. Anyway, we had a lovely wander for a couple of hours before retiring to our chamber.
posted by Maarty @ 12:00 pm,
