Sally and I are wearing down. Our days have run from 6:00 am to 11:00 pm the last week, and the days have been filled with activity. Our original plan to take vacations from our vacation was a great idea, except, we have played harder on our vacation from vacation days than on our vacation. The Dolomites were supposed to be restful, but we were up and driving by 6:30 am each morning and not getting done with dinner and packing until 10:30 or 11:00 pm. These last two days, first driving from the Dolomites then exploring Venice with Pat and Bill and then yesterday walking Venice and getting home late has us feeling draggy. Today, we are going to try a low key approach to Venice and explore some possibilities for when Jeff gets here.
Last night, Sally found a campground with bungalow tents for rent for 57 euro a night outside Venice in the town of Fusino, a boat ride away from Saint Marks square. This morning we thought we would test how this will work when Jeff arrives.
We took the bus to Piazza Roma, boarded what we thought would be a fast boat around to St. Marks and headed out around the south part of Venice instead of the Grand Canal. Turns out it was the outside milk run and we stopped at every dock. Still, we got to St Marks and the Zaccaria boat stop. From what we had read, this was the terminal from which to catch a boat to Fusino and the campground Sally had spotted. We asked at the ticket booth. The lady there said we needed to go back to Piazza Roma and take a bus to Fusino. We rejected that idea. We went to another ferry worker and she said she did not know, but to try the other ticket booth. We tried it. The man here said we were at the wrong boat landing. We were supposed to be at Zattere, not Zaccaria. Ok, truth time. Neither of us had paid any attention to the name past the first letter, Z. I just assumed there was only one dock that started with Z. On the boat trip to San Marco we had stopped at the Zattere dock, but I did not make the connection. Oh boy. So, we hopped on the the 5.2 line and rode back to Zattere. Once there, we asked if our day passes we had bought yesterday were good for the ferry to Fusino. Nope. A different company ran that boat route. To buy tickets for it, we needed to go to the office over there, about 100 yards from the shore in a little office. We had to wait for the man in the office to get off the phone. After he did, we found the tickets were 13 euro round trip each. Since this was just an exploratory for an idea, we decided that was more than we wanted to spend. After all, we had day passes for every other boat, why would we pay extra to ride a boat that was not covered by our passes. We had not been to the islands of Lido, Murano or Burano yet. Better to spend our time exploring them for free than paying extra to see Fusino.
We caught the 5.2 toward Lido and sat through about 4 stops until we were dropped on the island of Lido. The lagoon was particularly choppy today, with big waves splashing against the water bus, so much so that some spray came in through the open windows.
When we disembarked at Lido the first thing I saw was a Vodafone Store across the street from the dock. My 5 Gb of data I purchased on June 1 had suddenly quit on Monday, just at the time I needed it to find the Caldwell's. I was anxious to talk to these guys and find out what happened, as I knew I had not used all 5 Gb.
I had to wait about 10 minutes to be helped. Finally, one of the salesmen was free, Marco, a young man of about 25 years. He explained that the plan I was sold in Siena, the one from the sweet girl who seemed so helpful, was only good for 12 days. What?!?! She never told me that. Of course, I did not ask how long it was good for. I assumed (never do that with these crooked phone companies) that 5 Gb meant that it was good for 5 Gb, not also a time limit, especially since I said I would be in Italy for another month and needed service the whole time. She had said I could recharge it when it ran out, but again, I assumed when the data ran out, not a time limit. Marco said if I got a new SIM card he could get me set up with a 10Gb plan that lasted for a month, for 25 euros. hhhmmmm. . . What question should I be asking that would reveal information he is not telling me? If it rains three days in the month of June does my coverage end? If I drive more than 500 Km my SIM card speed drops for 4G to 56k modem speed? What???? I could not think of what question to ask that would prevent me from experiencing the gotchas again, so I forked over the 25 euro, had him slip the new SIM card in and walked out the door feeling like I had been ripped off again, but didn’t know how it would materialize.
We walked across the island of Lido to the public beaches on the Adriatic Sea. We did not think to bring swimsuits, so all we could do was look. Besides, the weather was threatening to thunderstorm today and was heavily overcast with a temperature in the high 70’s. We walked the beach road for a bit, then returned to the ferry dock via a grocery store where we picked up some fruit and other items for lunch.
Marco had told me to wait two hours before switching on the Cellular Data on the iPad. At two hours I switched it on. “No Service”. hmm . . . We were sitting right outside the Vodafone store, but they close for 3 hours for lunch, (12:30-3:30, yes its true, most of Italy takes a two or three hour lunch. I find it a great idea. It slows the pace and allows people interact and enjoy lunch. Greedy America should try it. People might be happier.) It was 2:30 pm. I did not want to wait another hour on Lido waiting for them to open. Even though my faith in phone companies is extremely low, we boarded the ferry back to San Marco in the hope that the account would spring to life and we would have the Internet again. On the ferry ride back, I decided to restart the iPad. Maybe that would help. I did. It did. I got service and the internet back. Yeah! I wonder how long it will last this time.
The one thing we had not done in Venice was ride in a gondola. A true gondola ride through the city canals is 80 euros for 40 minutes. This is a little spendy for our budget. However, there are seven places along the Grand Canal where gondolas act as ferries across the expanse for 2 euros. With this in mind, we decided to walk into a new area of the city, along the Grand Canal until we found a gondola ferry to ride.
This part of our walk was nice. The city here was not as crowded and the area was pleasant. Eventually, we came upon a square that fronted the canal and saw a gondola taxi we could ride across. We stood in line for only a few minutes before 10 of us loaded into the boat and were ferried across the Grand Canal. Total time of the ride? About a minute. Good enough. We continued our walk in the direction of the Piazza Roma and the bus that would take us home. It was about 4:00 pm. We were looking forward to getting home a little earlier tonight and getting some sleep. Sally saw some shoes in a store and stopped into see them. I joined her while she tried some on, sitting on a stool writing in my blog. When we stepped out 10 minutes later, the sky was noticeably darker. Threateningly darker. We picked up our wandering pace a bit, heading for the nearest ferry dock, hoping that a ferry ride would keep us out of the obviously impending rain. Navigating with Google Maps, we made our way to the Ca’ Rezzonico stop. We walked onto the floating station and sat down to wait for a boat coming in our direction. The lighting was amazing as the dark clouds and lowering sun created a magically light on the Grand Canal.
The first boat was going the wrong direction. We could see a boat coming in our direction, just as the sky opened up and rain came down in sheets driven by the wind and serenaded by thunder. Luckily, we were in the covered boat stop and out of the rain. The boat pulled up. It was only 8 feet from the covered boat dock to the covered boat, but the rain was falling so hard it looked like an army was throwing buckets of water at the dock and boat. We elected to stay in the cover of the dock and wait for the next boat. Our thinking was, a storm this violent would not last long and would blow itself out by the time the next boat arrived. Besides, the boat was already packed with people and we might not have gotten under cover had we boarded.
We guessed right. The wind and rain subsided after another 10 minutes. The next boat came, also packed with people, but enough got off to allow us room to stand on deck under the cover. We were packed in next to a young woman from Milan on vacation to Venice to see art with her mother. We enjoyed talking with her all the way to the stop at the train station, where she got off. We continued one more stop to the Piazza Roma stop. We rode the bus back to our neighborhood, but before going to our room we stepped across the street to a Kabab shop and each got one to go for dinner. Back in our apartment, we enjoyed our dinner.
Showers, catching up on the Internet and the news and we were just about ready for bed. Just as we were quieting down, Sally got a text from Beth Caldwell saying her brother Joel had been in a motorcycle accident in German, near Frankfurt and was in the hospital with a shattered foot and a concussion. WHAT!!! This was not what any of us wanted to hear! We texted Pat and Bill. They had heard the news, but did not know anymore than we did. Hailey was flying from Rome to Frankfurt to be with Joel and we would know more when she got there. By midnight, Hailey reported that he was pretty much out of it, hopefully due to the pain meds and not the concussion. His leg was bad. The doctors had done one surgery on it yesterday. The doc would be in at 7:00 am the next morning and she would let Pat and Bill know more then.
Sally and I are both sick with this news. Such big plans for two amazing kids, and now this. We went to sleep wondering how this would all shake out. Could Joel make it to the wedding site by Wednesday, a week away? How bad are the injuries? What about all the family and friends coming halfway around the world for the wedding? Although all these thoughts flooded our brains, our first concern was for Joel. Would he be okay? How bad was the foot? How severe the concussion? We would not know until tomorrow morning at the earliest, and perhaps later. Up until the last hours, it had been a another great day. Now worry clouded the days end.
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