Part One - Venice: Days 1-3

Because of Aer Lingus’ every-other-day flight schedule to Venice, I arrived the day before Patrick. I was very nervous about arriving alone, after dark, in a place where I don’t know the language. (Yes, I know, everyone speaks English but bitter experience has taught me that the signage mightn’t be in English.)

I emailed the hotel and received detailed instructions on how to get to the Alloggi Agli Artisti. In the departures lounge of Dublin Airport, I studied these directions and the map with all the intensity of a general planning a battle. I compared the directions to the travel information in my Lonely Planet guide book and was starting to feel a little more confident and a little less anxious about my ability to get from Point A to Point B.

After an uneventful flight of just over two hours, we arrived at Marco Polo airport. As I’d expected, it was dark and chilly. We were herded off of the plane and onto a little articulated bus that zipped us over to the terminal. The immigration check was quick and by the time I set foot in the baggage area, the flight’s baggage was just starting to arrive. I’d purchased a special bag just for the trip, one of those enormous rucksacks that are the favoured luggage of college students and hard-core campers everywhere.

My bag arrived in no time, but my hurley was nowhere to be seen. Yeah, I’d insisted on bringing my hurley so I could practice roll-lifts, which my trainer showed me how to do the day before my holiday started. Besides, you never know when a big stick is going to come in handy. In Dublin airport, the baggage check-in person asked me to remove my hurley from my rucksack and checked it as a separate item.

So, there I was, standing at the luggage counter window, trying to explain to a puzzled woman who spoke great English but was understandably not au fait with GAA, that my hurley was missing. “It’s sort of like a hockey stick, but flatter at the end, like a giant wooden spoon.” I was saved when about a couple of luggage handlers brought it over to me.

Rucksack on my bag and hurley in my hand, I walked through a gauntlet of customs police and a too-friendly German sheperd police dog to the outer arrivals area of Marco Polo airport. I have nothing but good things to say about MP. It’s big, sleek, modern, clean, and spacious. The signage is fantastic, particularly for getting you to the section where they sell transportation tickets. The whole airport is very well designed and it’s obvious that they thought carefully about how best to get people out of the airport and into Venice or Padua or wherever the next destination is.

My directions from the wonderful Giacomo at the hotel told me to take the bus to Pizzalle Roma, the last place in Venice where cars are allowed. Then I was instructed to take the N-1 vaporetti (boat-bus) to the Ferrovia stop, which is at the Saint Lucia train station. My guide book, however, told me that it was possible to take a special water bus to the Saint Lucia train station.

I knew I should take the bus, but damn it, I was in Venice and I wanted to take a boat. The ticket window was for both bus tickets and boat tickets, so I figured if I told the woman I needed to get to Ferrovia, she would tell me the best way to do that. (By the way, I love that word, Ferrovia. Say it – it really is a lovely word. Fer-O-Vee-aaaah.) The woman charged me 2 euro for a bus ticket and sent me out the door to bus stand #1.

I felt something was odd, as I’d expected the ticket to cost 3 euro. Outside, I could see from the electronic board that bus stand #2 was for Pizzalle Roma. A nagging voice in my head reminded me that there was another train station in Venice, on the mainland. Mestre. Sure enough, that’s what my ticket was for. If I got on that bus, I’d end up miles and miles away from where I needed to be.

I waited for the Pizzalle Roma bus and when it arrived, I told the driver I’d been sold the wrong ticket. He made sure I wanted to go to Pizzalle Roma and I assured him that was my intended destination. He looked at my Mestre ticket and then waved me onto the bus with a shrug. I was heartily relieved that I’d avoided making such a stupid traveling mistake.

The bus set off for Venice, traveling past industrial waste grounds and car dealerships. Airports around the world seem to be located in similar areas. We drove down a long bridge, about 6 km, that reminded me of driving to Key West. The bus pulled into Pizzalle Roma and before I knew it, I was standing alone in a scrubby square trying to figure out where to go. Well, I wasn’t literally alone. There were other people around but I didn’t know anyone and wasn’t quite sure where I was going.

I took a deep breath, hoisted my pack and blundered off in the direction of the canal. I decided taking the vaporetti was the best way to go, so I bought a 24-hour pass, figuring I could use the ticket the next day in my explorations. When I shoved the ticket into the yellow validation machine, nothing happened. I tried it a couple of times, but the machine appeared to be broken. I pocketed the ticket, figuring that if stopped I’d be able to explain what had happened.

I followed the signs for the N1 vaporetti and got onto what I thought was the boat. I stood in a corner waiting for the boat to undock. When the actual boat arrived, I realised that I’d confused what was essentially a bus shelter with the boat. I stood in the middle part of the boat, feeling the chill winds and looking out at the dark water and shapes of buildings. I could hear maritime noises and it felt like I was in a spy movie. I kept expecting a bum to shamble up to me, whisper something nonsensical in Italian and drop a packet of classified documents into my purse.

My boat trip only lasted 2 minutes, since Ferrovia was the next stop. I followed Giacomo’s excellent directions and arrived at the hotel in no time, ready for dinner and a good long sleep to fortify me for my next day of exploring.

Explorations

The next morning, I was out early for a pre-breakfast walk. It is exactly like the pictures. I don’t think I’ve ever visited a place that compared so closely with my expectations. Canals, bridges, cobbled streets – it’s all the way it is on the postcards and in the travel books.




What struck me most thought was that Venice is a place with domestic needs and duties. It’s not just a holiday palace or a movie set. It’s a real working city with the demands of any city anywhere. It’s not Disneyland, where I imagine they go to great lengths to hude the garbage collections and the goods deliveries.

Within a few minutes, I saw a recycling boat, a boat carrying crates of Moet, a police boat, an ambulance boat, and a boat carrying construction materials. My perception of boats, with the exception of fishing boats, is that they are the playthings of the rich. Oh sure, I know that right now there are thousands of enormous cargo ships traversing the oceans. But when I think of small boats, I tend to think of sail boats and yachts, hobby boats for well-off sailors. In Venice, small boats are beasts of burden, carrying everything from fresh fruit and kegs of beer to toilet paper and two-by-fours.

Everyone talks about how expensive Venice is and I can’t disagree. You can find reasonably priced meals, but the minimum going rate for a 500 ml bottle of diet Coke is 2 euro, a good 70 cent more expensive than Ireland. The difference is that in Ireland, it’s hard sometimes to understand why things are so much more expensive. In Venice, after five minutes of looking around, you understand the price of things.

A supply boat pulls up to a dock. The supplies are unloaded and if your shop or restaurant is right on the canal, then getting the supplies into your business is relatively easy. If, on the other hand, your shop is in a picturesque little square tucked away in a quiet corner of Venice, your supplies are loaded onto a handcart. Someone has to then take that handcart and wheel it to your establishment. If there are several canals between your business and the boat dock, then the poor delivery person has to get that cart up and down the steps of the bridges, one bumping step at a time. So, you can see how the labour/delivery costs gets added into the price of goods.

(This is not to say that there isn’t tourist pricing in effect in some areas. For example, there is no reason why that bottle of diet coke should cost 2.50 or 3 euro in the San Marco area except that thirsty tourists, bedazzled by the splendor of the Basilica, will pay more for things because they either don’t know any better, aren’t thinking clearly, or can’t be arsed to shop around.)

On my first day in Venice, I steered clear of San Marco, figuring I should save that for when Patrick was there. Since our plan was to spend the next night in Venice, go to Slovenia for 10 days, and then return to Venice for 2 days, I didn’t feel like I had to cram in Venice. I knew that I would be returning so I could just relax and enjoy walking around and soaking in the sights.

One of the most important tenets, I think, of being a tourist is to recognise and seize opportunities. During one of my ambles, I needed to find a toilet, so I ducked into a hotel near Rialto. I blew past the front desk, acting like I knew where I was going and belonged there. (That’s another key skill, by the way.) On the way to the bathroom, I saw signs for a panoramic terrace. I decided to check it out and was rewarded some quiet time on a lovely little terrace overlooking the canal and Rialto.





I did take care of a couple pieces of business. Between my parents and my father-in-law, we’d been given 300 euro to use in our trip. Patrick and I decided we’d use it in Slovenia, mostly to rent a car for a day trip/adventure from Ljubljana. I wanted to get the euro converted into Slovenian tolars (SIT) in Venice because I hate arriving into a country without at least a little of the official cash on hand. I found a currency exchange near Rialto, handed over my euro and walked out with 60,000 SIT. As Patrick later remarked, it was like our very own Slovenian rap video.

The other thing I did was purchase our tickets for the train to Ljubljana. The EC Casanova goes direct, takes about four hours and is meant to cost around 30 euro. The ticket seller informed me that I could have a special rate of 15 euro, but I wouldn’t be able to change the tickets. Fair enough – it’s not like our plans were going to change.

I met a very jet-lagged Patrick at Marco Polo airport in the afternoon. He’d flown from Atlanta to Detroit, then from Detroit to Amsterdam. I think he had about a four hour layover in Amsterdam before flying to Venice. It was 4 pm in Venice, but it was 10 am in Patrick’s head and he’d been mostly awake for about 30 hours. He’d hoped to be able to sleep on the transatlantic flight, but the guy behind Patrick somehow kept poking him in the ribs with his feet. I’m not sure of the logistics of this, only that Patrick was not very amused.

We went back to the hotel, where Patrick was able to have a shower and feel a bit more human. I wouldn’t let him nap though. We watched a little Italian television and then headed out to get dinner. We got quite lost, wandering the twisty alleyways in search of a pizza place recommended in Lonely Planet. In the dark, it’s very difficult to see where the narrow walkways lead. As a result, it sometimes looks like people are bursting out of nowhere or walking into brick walls.

In the end, we did find the pizza place and then quite easily found our way back to the hotel. Patrick toughed it out until 9 pm and slept through the night, which is best (albeit hardest) way to tackle jetlag.

Goodbye Venice, Hello Ljubljana

After breakfast, we packed our rucksacks and checked out of the room. Since our trip was broken into discrete chunks, Patrick and I devised a scheme for who would pay for which lodging instead of splitting everything in half at each place. The end result was the same, but the mechanics were a bit easier. It was my job to pay for the first hotel in Venice, which I did with cash when we were checking out.

Patrick: Why didn’t you just pay with a credit card?

Me: Well, I used Peter’s credit card for the booking, but I’d rather just pay cash unless I have no choice but to pay online.

When I mentioned Peter’s credit card, the hotel desk clerk looked up sharply and gave me this sly, knowing smile. I was puzzled about this until later when Patrick said that she probably thought I was having an affair. This was such an alien concept to me. I mean, Patrick and I have been siblings for twenty-eight years. I barely think of him as a man – he’s my little brother.

We had a low-key day in Venice, just killing time until our train left in the afternoon. Patrick wanted a travel journal, so we made that our morning’s goal. My trusty Lonely Planet guide recommended an art store as having everything you could ever want, so we made that our first stop. When we went into the small shop, which also doubled as a photocopying and Internet place, it was hard to believe it was the same shop the guidebook boasted about.

The shop had art supplies, but it didn’t have sketchbooks. Or at least it had nothing visible. We tried to explain to the guy what we were looking for, but he didn’t speak English. We finally shrugged, thanked him, and left. The guidebook also recommended a couple of places that sold marbled paper (which sounds really difficult to write on, if you ask me), so we went to one of those – Legatoria Polliero. (One of the great games when you don’t speak the language is to make up the meaning of names. I decided that Legatoria Polliero meant “the Legal Chicken.”)

It was a great place – stacked haphazardly with journals, notebooks, picture frames, photograph albums and other hand-made paper-based goods. The owner was a grumpy-ish old man who didn’t speak English. Patrick selected a journal and a pencil, which the man very carefully and precisely wrapped. Patrick was so taken with the place that he said he wanted to beg the man to take him on as an apprentice.

In the afternoon, we caught our train to Ljubljana. It was a nice, modern train. No antiquated carriages with those horribly awkward little rooms although the seating was in groups of four around a table. I’m not sure I understand the rationale behind this decision, unless the bias is for social groups and sociable traveling. I much prefer bus-style, straight-ahead-in-pairs seating.

Patrick and I had facing window seats, so we kept crunching each other’s toes, which I guess is better than fighting over the arm rest. After the second or third stop, a guy got on and sat next to me. I did my best to politely ignore him, which is how I tend to treat strangers on these sorts of forced-close-quarters situations.

I read my book and tried not to listen to the obnoxious music of the guy behind me. I’ll need to rant about this on my other blog sometime, but it mystifies me that even with headphones, you often have to listen to other people’s music when you’re traveling via public transportation.

We had an uneventful trip, arriving into Ljubljana around 7.30 at night. It was dark and starting to rain. We found a cash machine so we could get some tolar. I was able to take out money from my Irish account without difficulty, but Patrick first didn’t know how much money he wanted to take out and then was having trouble getting his US-issued bank card to work properly.

This is where we had our first sibling spat. I got edgy, standing in front of a cash station in a potentially questionable part of town, with 35-pound rucksacks on our backs. In my paranoid mind, we might as well just issue written invitations to all the muggers in town. In Patrick’s head, he didn’t want to be cashless. I was annoyed with Patrick because I felt like he should have figured out how much he needed BEFORE we got to the cash machine and that his disorganization and technical difficulties were putting us in unnecessary potential danger.

I stepped over the line when I canceled his ATM transaction and told him we’d worry about it tomorrow and that I had plenty of cash to cover dinner. (It was my job to pay for lodging in Ljubljana, so he didn’t have to worry about that either.) This seizing of Patrick’s autonomy and reenactment of childhood roles (Bossy Old Sister vs. Incapable Baby Brother) understandably upset Patrick although I think he was a bit too sharp in expressing his feelings about the situation, which happened as we tromped the five blocks to the hostel I’d booked for us.

By the time we got to the hostel, I was ready to give up the trip as a bad job. I think I was also in the blood-sugar red zone, which certainly wasn’t helping matters. We got to the hostel and tried to check in only to find out that we didn’t have reservations.

Desk Attendant: I have no record of your reservation.
Me: I booked online. Room 107. Then I called in with the credit card. This was about a month ago.
DA: No, I don’t see any record of that here.
Me (temper barely in check): Here’s my e-mail confirmation.
DA (compares print-out to the computer): This is for 4 March through 7 March. Today is 3 March. Your reservation doesn’t start until tomorrow.
Me (wiping egg off my face): Right. Do you have any beds for tonight? Doesn’t have to be a double.
DA: Sorry, I don’t even have half a bed for tonight. The whole place is booked solid.

The Desk Attendant was fantastically helpful though. She gave us a map and marked the location of the nearest hostel, which looked like it was about a half mile away. I asked about a closer hotel and there was one just at the end of the street. So, off we trudged, with one of us trying desperately to salvage the tattered shreds of her Organizing Queen title. How could I possibly have let that happen? I had visions of us trekking for ages to get to the other hostel only to find that either they didn’t have any beds or they only had beds in a 32-bed dormitory room. Ugh. The best I could hope for was that the hotel would have available and affordable rooms.

Patrick and I also had a bit of patching up to do. This proved to be relatively straightforward and easy. Patrick, you see, is a much better person than I am. He graciously accepted my apology and proffered apologies of his own. We arrived at the Park Hotel with the ignominious incident well behind us.

The Park Hotel saved the day, coming through with a double room for a reasonable 72 euro total (and they accepted euro notes, so we didn’t have to dip into our tolar fund). The room was a bit odd, with the two single beds long-wise against one wall. Patrick said he felt like he was back in his college dorm room. We had everything we needed at the Park – beds, ensuite bathroom, and cable television. The only thing we were missing was dinner, which we got for carryout from a nearby kebab restaurant.

It took me about an hour of mulling it over to realise what had happened. In my original itinerary, I had us getting off the train in Postjona, spending the night there, and then touring the cave before catching a bus or train into Ljubljana. But then the lodging options in Postjona seemed a bit thin on the ground and it looked like a better option was to go there as a day trip. So I changed the logistics of our itinerary, but it never occurred to me to then extend the hostel stay in Ljubljana. I guess I thought the hostel would just magically know that I’d changed our plans. Duh.

After dinner, Patrick went to check out the local nightlife and I went to sleep. In the morning, I learned that he’d met a guy who was desperate to meet an American woman, preferably one in her 40s or 50s. It seems like Patrick had talked to this guy for about 5 minutes before the guy was handing over his email address and asking Pat to find him a girlfriend.