What happens in Venice, stays in Venice

The Lonely Planet book of Italy (let's called it LIfe SAver aka LISA - so you know already that I spent a lot of time with LISA ;) - and my wife didn't have any issues with it either) gave references of some hotels and hostel. We walked for about 15 minutes and came across the student hostel. It cost us 21€ pp (total of 42€) per night. It was an ordinary room with split level bunker beds, shared shower (lockable door) and shared toilets. But, the price was right! Venice is known to be expensive, so it now seems we got away pretty good.

We went out after getting fresh and the weather had gotten mild by then. The beauty of Venice was captivating - mostly because of the literature, media and tourism promotions. No matter what, it was pretty neat. The old city has canals through it but around the old city and in the new Venice, there is no indication of canals. They are very much like any other city around the world. Busy and dirty!

The canal does stink a bit but after a while it becomes the baseline and we couldn't smell it anymore - believe me it is not as stinky as Union Station :P We walked for a while going through the areas around the hostel, crossed over the main canal, and into Rialto - the main market area. When I was younger, I have seen ads for movies to be played at Rialto Theatre and always wondered where the name originated from.

Venice is divided into six sectors and we walked through all of them on foot. Although, there are two other ways of travelling within the city: namely getting a gondola (if you are willing to spend 100€ or so - you can also get music with it for another 100€), or the water bus (a large motor boat that can take 30-40 ppl) and cost about 5€ per trip. I seriously don't think I wanted to spend good 100€ for the gondola, although I am not sure if deep inside my better half wanted a romantic evening through the city in gondola. However, here I would like to promise her that if I have more money and Venice is close by, I will take her there for a romantic sunset gondola ride - with music!

So we walked through Rialto and along the canal until the end of San Polo (one of the sectors of Venice). We had dinner along a canal-side restaurant. This was my first exposure to italian pizza in Italy - and let me say this - it was disappointing! Pizza Hut, Pizza Pizza etc have americanized the pizza but it tastes better too. Venice is known more for its tourism than food anyways. However, I believe it should be, as I will prove it later.

We then walked back and the life had erupted in rather quiet Venice out of nowhere. Rialto was busy and so was the area around railway station. We decided to get the tickets for Milan for the next day - but all the picket windows were closed in the station. Chill went down my spine but before it could hit the extremeties, I saw biglietteri (a ticket machine). Hmm ... let's use it. It was the neatest, user-friendly machine I had used in a long time. Took us less than 2 minutes to get two tickets for Milan - printed in our hands, credited to Visa. We could even choose the seats that we wanted to get in the train. 10/10 points for the machine (as I will keep praising the machine at different occassions).

By now, the sunset was over. We saw it during our dinner at the restaurant. There were now some 5,000 people around the station - all tourists.

3 - Venice and hold off at Rome

"Alberto!"."Jamil!", I replied. Long pause. My wife got a seat across the aisle from me. Originally, she got a ticket a mile away from me. I asked the check-in counter to have another look at the seats. I mean if we are all "huggy huggy" and checking in together, we intend to sit together too. May be not! Guess, that's how the Romans do. Anyways, these were the best seats we could get.

"Do you speak english?". "Polo Polo!", at least that's what I understood. "Have you been in Canada for long?". "I don't know". Huh? I had no idea that it will be become the most commonly spoken phrase in Italy and in my next 10 days. Couple of minutes later, it was decided that for the next 10 days or so, we will live off the sign language. Anyways, we had a nice take off. Before, Alberto could get any more comfortable, I asked him if he likes the window seat? He immediately broke his annoyance on getting a window seat and looked at me with envy as I stretched my leg in the aisle - not to say that he was taller than I. Haha! Trapped! I presented him the offer of swapping seats with Sushma who was good 2 ft away across the aisle from me. Alberto was most kind in accepting the offer - all he saw was an aisle on his left. Later he turned out to be very happy to sit besides a nice-looking young signorita who had just about the same english fluency as Alberto did. Top this with the most welcoming gradma she had who immediately approved Alberto to be as frank with her granddaughter as the airlines allowed it to be. Of course, I couldn't be happier than being with my signora.

We got a dinner in the flight, although I had a feeling that we won't! Turns out that instead of getting some italian chicken recipe, it tasted more like Chicken Jalfrezi (indian dish of chicken, onions and green pepper). Coffee sucked! At least we were not starving.

Censoring the rest of the newly wed couple's flight, we reached morning time area. Clear skies and we could see the Alps. Most wonderful sight. Just the sheer grandiosity of area span was amazing. The sun and height of plan presented beautiful shadows and textures on the mountains. It was an indication that we will be reaching Italy soon enough.

Then the airplan took a right turn. Excuse me, but Venice seems to be half an hour from here. Yeah, you are right, but we are going via Rome. Huh? Two hours of extra time. WTH? We reached Rome an hour or so later. We have been using big airports for so long, that we forgot that the buses are still being used as mode of transfer between the lounge and the plane. It seemed like a pretty small airport and I was expecting a pretty big one. Anyways, Sushma, and I, and Alberto, and his signorita, and the liberal grandma waited a good hour before we took off for Venice again.

"Any good hotels in Venice?", I bugged Alberto again. He signalled, "I don't know". Then he suggested the word "Albergo?" which my Bible to Italy had forgot to mention. Sushma, quickly took out our 20 pages crash course to Italian language and got the information. "Yes", she replied. With all the modesty, Alberto indicated his ignorance, "I don't know". Hmm... we better go out ourselves.

We breezed through the immigration and the luggage pickup. We got tickets for the bus to Venice city and out we came the airport. And the heat wave hit us. Man, I have missed that for so many years. Not that it doesn't get hot in Toronto, it was just a different type of heat. Cold, that has become a integral part of my joints, starting coming out. Believe me, I started feeling as if I had lost weight in five minutes.

The transport was good - public bus - fast! It dropped us at the Venice bus stop.

And our first search of the hotel began ...

2 - Booking & Departure

In the midst of all the fancy dresses, jewellery, residential integration, shouting, fighting, screaming and yelling, we decided to go on a honeymoon too. We always knew that it will be a spontaneous decision and we had no clue where we wanted to go. Next think we know, we were booking our tickets with Alba Tours - and must I say, it was an utmost pleasure getting the tickets from them. The airline is SKYSERVICE and is about half the price of upscale airlines like BA, AirItalia, Air Canada etc. Reason: it is a charter service.

We finished our moving on 31st of August (actually 2am September 1st, 2006 to be exact) and we had only one day to prepare our trip. Luckily, we got hold of tickets on the 29th August (I mean, what's the big hurry!) to fly out on 2nd September.

Around 8.30pm on September 1, 2006 we decided to get a travel book as well and bought this incredibly useful book by "Lonely Planet" series. The decision was made on looking at first two pages about Venice on three different books.

Around 12pm on September 2, 2006 - just four hours before we had to leave a maze of boxes and garbage bags (yes, I ran out of boxes so stuffed everything into NEW garbage bags and threw them into the moving van), Sushma decides to change the backpacks - actually that was a damn good decision. We went to Square one to get two big camping rucksacks. By 2pm, we were ready to have lunch and everything was packed except for liquids and gels i.e. water, toothpaste, body cream, shampoo!! I was stupid to think that we could take these massive bags in the cabin - I later regretted my decision - so much so that ... never mind.

Anyways, at 2pm we found out that flight is delayed by 2 hours till 9.35pm - it was cloudy and drizzled a bit. Good for us, because it gave us some time with the family.

We took the bus from our apartment - why waste 40 bucks on the cab when we could live with 5 bucks - a budget trip is like that!! It was fun riding the bus with 30 Kg in the two backpacks. We reached airport early and hence didn't have to stand in the queue - always a relief!

As it turns out, the ban on liquids was removed if the material is bought from the duty free area in the departure lounge. You are given a receipt and the packet with your sealed purchased items are delivered a few minutes before departure - neat!

The boarding didn't start till 10pm - but we had a lot of fun - absolutely no worries - it was just beautiful - the flight might as well could have delayed another 3 hours - who cares - we were in no hurry ... unlike some of other people in our plane who stood for good 70 mins in the queue on leading to boarding ramp - why would you do that - no one was gonna leave them behind !!

1 - Intro

This is our trip to Italy - two reasons - we just got married and we decided beforehand that we will go around the world in a set of trips. What other place than to a postcard picturesque place - what we have always seen in the books, magazines, TV, movies - the Tower of Pisa, the half broken Colleseum, the romantic Venice. Here is a travelogue through the land of Romans - we did as Romans do - or did we??