The cold Connie announced she had yesterday had gone from a tropical storm to a category 3 hurricane overnight. A lot of walking wasn’t in our immediate future. For our trip to the airport tomorrow, we planned to take the Vaporetto to the train station and a bus from there. We thought we’d rehearse the first leg to time it and locate the bus service. As soon as we’d bought our day passes, a different kind of boat tied up to the Vaporetto dock. Called the Alilaguna, it was lower and narrower. Turns out it is a regularly scheduled airport shuttle. The boats were more suited to fast travel over the lagoon to the airport than the clunky Vaporetti.
We carried out our rehearsal anyway. Given what we’d heard about the shuttle it turned out that plan A was usurped. Since Connie felt so crappy, we decided to just ride the waterbus for a while. It was a local and stopped at most of the docks along the Grand Canal. Its final destination was Lido, an island separated from Venice by about 10 minutes of water. We got off at the next to last stop before Lido.
That end of the island, when viewed from the water, has always seemed to be big, lush park. And, we weren’t disabused of that notion immediately. Rather than turn toward the park entrance, we turned toward town in search of a café. Right there. It was in what had been a large greenhouse and was very nice. We sat indoors, had dopio café lattes and the best muffins we’ve ever had and that fixed us up just right.
We headed toward the park entrance and noticed that there was town behind the thick veneer trees and soon we came upon a ticket booth. Behind it was more than a park – it included a cultural center. Not for us so we went back to the canal boardwalk and enjoyed the trees along it as we headed toward the end of that island. But, Connie’s cold and three weeks on the run had taken its toll and after a short rest on a bench, we caught the Vaporetto back to town. The time that we spent out there was nice because it was away from the crowds and noise.
We got off at San Marco Square and walked the most direct route back to our hotel and then on to our new favorite restaurant for lunch. It was great again, though not as crowded. An hour of beyond the call of duty shopping did us in for the count and we retired to our room exhausted. Tomorrow we’d be going home.
By the way, the reason Saint Mark’s Basilica is in Venice is that the Venetians, at the height of their power, went to Alexandria and ripped off his remains. He had been the Bishop of Alexandria and now he’s a tourist attraction in Venice.