Italy - Day Four - Florence to Venice By Train

It's Helen's birthday today. She awakes, and the first thing that comes out of her mouth was "where's our train tickets for London back to Edinburgh?". I get that sinking feeling as I realise we left them at home, they are sitting on the bookshelf where I left them. For the sake of keeping the peace, I take full responsibility for this! This is bad. Very bad. UK rail companies will not bend in this situation. Tickets are non-replaceable, non-refundable, and we could be £100s out of pocket to replace them.

Anyway, we're up early because today we're catching the Eurostar Italia, first class, to Venice (Venezia to the locals).

First priority is to get packed and to station. Second priority, sort out forgotten tickets once on the train. We arrive a little early and our train isn't even there yet. It arrives about 10 minutes before departure, and it's a mad scramble to board the train. People are pulling suitcases, prams, etc down the aisles; bashing and crashing. We're pleased to get moving.

I spend the next hour phoning our property manager, letting agent, concierge etc in Edinburgh. We know somebody has a key to our flat. They can hopefully go in, get our train tickets, and mail them to London for us to collect on Friday. This proves difficult, and we go around in circles, but I eventually get one helpful person who takes ownership and arranges for somebody to help us. So far so good, but as the week progresses this proves less promising, more on that later!

Once we arrive in Venice, it's all go. We expected cooler weather, but we were wrong. Right outside the train station is the Grand Canal, and already I am amazed at what I see. We purchase tickets for the Vaporetto (water bus) and hop on board. It takes us through the Grand Canel to Piazza San Marco. It's packed with tourists, and we have to lug our bags through the crowds, over stepped bridges, and through narrow back streets to find our B&B.

At the B&B, it's up four flights of stairs with no lift! Our B&B host, Riccardo, is quick to give us a map and give us local advice. We head off nearby, for a little look around, and to find some lunch. The place we find isn't so Italian, actually run by Asians, and as the week continued we found them all over Venice. We called them "Mr Bun" and any Wellingtonian will know what we mean. Their pasta was nice however, as was their tomato and mozarella.

The remainder of the day was taken just walking around, in absolute amazement. Every building is beautiful in its own way. The Gondolas are soothing to watch. The gelato cones are refreshing. The water taxis competing with the Gondolas are entertaining.

The day goes very quick. We retire at a reasonable hour, preparing for a busy day ahead in this incredible city.