July 15^th, 2012

Day 57: Venice, Italy

After a late night, we were woken up by Nico saying that he needed to get the room ready for his next guests so we speed packed our things away and got ready as quickly as possible! Breakfast was included with the stay and they had set us out some coffee, cereals, croissants and the likes. We ate quickly and then made our way outside and to the main train station to ride the boat bus!

It’s funny that boat is the most popular and most practical way to get around in Venice. There’s a boat taxi that takes you from the very top of the Grand Canal to the very bottom, so we bought tickets for that and got on. Nico had suggested we just ride the boat through the canal to see all of the palaces/buildings along the waterfront. Also, how often do you get to ride in a boat bus?!

We disembarked the boat at St. Marco’s Square and hung out there for a bit and then did exactly what we were told to- got lost. We wandered through the labyrinth of alleyways, over countless bridges and into various souvenir shops for most of the early afternoon.

We headed back to Nico and Matilde’s place around 3 or so, and got caught in a huge thunder/rain storm that came out of nowhere! We were pretty close to the their apartment when it started so we avoided the brunt of it, but it got pretty bad! Nico assured us it would only last a few minutes so we waited it out on the porch, watching the clouds pass in about 20 minutes.

After we said our goodbyes to our hosts, we made our way back to the train station to attempt to get a ticket to Barcelona (again), grab some food, and wait for our train to Milan. At the train station, we met the same woman we talked to yesterday and got the same answer- that she had no info/ability to book the tickets nor did she have the timetable. She had sent us to customer service yesterday but since we were trying to leave from Nice, they said they had no info other than timetables from Spain. We decided to give up and wing it for now, sitting with our fingers crossed that when we got to France it’d all work out.

Our train left Venice at 6p or so, and we were in Milan by 8:30. We grabbed a quick dinner at the train station and then hopped onto our connection, a train that took us to the border town of Ventimiglia where we arrived at around 1:00am. I guess the train system has something against overnight trains from Italy to France; the earliest train we could take to Monte Carlo (which was only 20 minutes away) didn’t leave until 5:14am. So, sleeping in the train station it was!

At first I thought we’d look like helpless kids sleeping in a corner overnight, but when we arrived into the main station in Ventimiglia, we found that it was spread with pseudo-camp sites for the night, with about 50 or so other travelers who were doing the same exact thing. Stephen and I staked out a comfortable section of tile, spread our beach towels, and passed out for a few hours!

Favorite part of the day: Wandering with no final destination. It’s always great to have an agenda or list of things to do/see, but wandering and just being happy to find the things you stumble upon truly is a great way to experience a city.