Drab, dreary, depressing, all of those things were what greeted me in Venice because of the steady rainfall, but, oh what atmosphere! 
I could already conjure up a story with the mist and the rain and the dark, hidden, watery streets of Venice; the obscure bodies hurrying along through the puddles under black umbrellas to unknown destinations. 
And from the shadows within the maze of bleak narrow streets arose a daunting figure from the gloom…..It didn’t help that I was once again drenched and hauling all my luggage…yes, I’d bought an umbrella in Madrid, but didn’t have a spare hand to carry it. I’ll have to get one of those head-wearing umbrellas!
When we landed awash through the mist at the airport, I already knew I’d made a regretful decision to take the water taxi to my hotel, but I decided to take it anyway for the experience. I trudged out of the airport and along a partially enclosed walkway for 7 minutes to the docks, and that’s where things went more wrong. The voucher I had was for a company, whose office was back at the airport and I would have to return there to make arrangements. So back I dragged my heavy luggage another 7 minutes to the airport.
There I discovered that for some reason they didn’t have my arrival time and so no arrangements had been made for me and the next taxi would not be available until 7 pm, and it was about 2 pm by then. (I was wondering why the company hadn’t e-mailed me to find out my arrival time, especially after I’d booked it through the airline service that I’d taken to Venice and they surely knew when I would be there.) At any rate, they provided a ticket on the public long range water bus and a map for where to get off and then walk for ten blocks to my hotel.
I cursed silently under my breath when I was told that I would have to walk back again to the docks….another 7 minutes and I would get there just in time to catch the water bus. I heaved my luggage back down the walkway, and finally made it on the ‘bus’ (boat).
Aside from one other 
couple, I was alone and enclosed in the bottom of the said bus. 
The pilot wouldn’t allow me to sit or 
stand on the deck. I began taking photos through the rain streaked windows, but they didn’t work very well. However, when we stopped to load or drop off passengers, I scurried up and took a few shots.
At last we made it to the Rialto Bridge stop and I disembarked, then sought a way to my hotel by what I thought would be a regular taxi. ). (There were no taxi cars.) I was directed to either walk or take another water taxi down the dock, but walking seemed out of the question
with the pouring rain and my arms feeling like they were coming out of my sockets. I trundled down the dock, but the water taxi drivers wouldn’t take me as I could apparently take the local public water transport to the next stop (one I’d already passed… They told me all this in Italian, not a word of which I understood. (I again silently cursed the woman at the airport ticket office for telling me the wrong stop to get off.)
I heaved my luggage onto the #1 ‘taxi’ and we chugged back down the canal and under the Rialto Bridge, back to the Ca’D’oro stop, which also happened to be the same name as my hotel. Duh? What was going on here?Everyone was scurrying along, intent on their own business, darting around me struggling with my luggage in the pouring rain, so that I just followed everyone down a tiny lane between two very tall buildings until I came out onto a main thoroughfare. There I asked the way to my hotel, several times, until I found someone who knew where I needed to go. Once again soaked, I had arrived. My first impressions of Venice were of bleakness and darkness and foggy gloom, yet they were the makings of a wonderful tale…
The sky darkened and the day drew towards a close, yet the time when I arrived at the hotel was only about 5:30 pm…it took a couple of hours or more to ride the boat up the canal into Venice…another tactical error on my part, but I am learning more about travelling all the time.
As in most European countries supper is not served until late, and as I hadn’t had much in the way of food all day I found myself hungry, but alas most of the restaurants wouldn’t open late- 8 pm – so it meant pub food or McDonald’s…yes there was a McDonald’s on the main drag….they popped up in Spain too, especially in Barcelona though I hadn’t seen them at first. I discovered they had Pizza huts, KFC and Burger King’s too….how disheartening!At any rate I found a partially empty pub that looked promising and
had some kind of heated ‘roll’ that seemed healthy enough with spinach, prescuitti, and cheese and who knows what else. Then I retired back to my hotel room…a small but cozy place with a real bed – a double one too! And evenly distributed heat and Wireless Internet, if I pay by the hour for it….though it doesn’t work in my room….I’ll have to go to the lounge to use it.
I’ve pre-booked myself on a number of tours for the next couple of days, trying to see as much of Venice as I can, though I’m regretting it a little now, as I’m a little tired and don’t feel like being up early each day. The tours start at 9 am , but I have to be there before that time, and also get there through a maze of waterways, which I thought at first would be charming, but now realize might be more of a pain, especially as I don’t know where I need to be, don’t know the schedules and can’t speak the language.
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