Friday, September 16, 2011

Venice Arrival

 
This afternoon we took the train from Lausanne to Venice, with a connection in Milan that added about an hour to the journey. The ride was relatively uneventful, aside from standard boarding-related chaos in Lausanne as well as the sporadic hissy-fits from a nearby todder whose parents thought that this was adorable and should be enjoyed by the rest of the passengers.

After arriving in Venice we walked from the train station to the Grand Canal in order to catch a boat that would take us in the direction of our hotel. Here's a view along the canal that I took while we were waiting.


Luck was not on our side. The first two boats that we tried to catch were too full and wouldn't let any new passengers on. And then when we finally did get on a boat, it turned out to be heading in the wrong direction. Fortunately, though, the "wrong" direction still took closer to the hotel, and simply required us to walk a bit more than planned.

On a positive note, it was beautiful out and we were able to take some nice pictures of Venice at night as we wandered the streets and crossed some of the city's many bridges.


As we neared the hotel, we fell victim to the difficulty of navigating the city's streets. While we knew exactly where the hotel was, we ran into multiple dead ends due to various smaller canals and the irregular street patterns.

Through some trial and error we eventually arrived at the hotel. It is relatively small (~10 rooms) and feels like it could have been the former residence of a wealthy Venetian bussinessman. We later learned that it used to be a Swiss Embassy.

Given the late arrival and extended trip to the hotel, we decided to call it an early night and start the real sightseeing in the morning.

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