Venice on a Friday evening

It's fair to say that Venice, when considered in totality, probably isn't as nice as Bellagio.  But Venice is itself quite unique.

In our two days here, we've had numerous plates of over-priced and only-average food. 

The queues for the various attractions are as memorable as the people in them are rude. 

The Rialto bridge is a riot; almost literally.  A bridge famed for its romance and beauty will be remembered by us for the continual scrum which takes place on it.  People physically fight to have the best view - and photograph - at the top of bridge.

It seems as though each water bus through the town centre carries about 1,000 people.  Travelling on one is a frenzied and over-priced affair.  Each stop of the bus initiates blind panic, as people push, barge and bite their way to the front to get off.   Their panic might be unjustified, as the bus stops only for a few seconds at each stop; the buses may come along as frequently as every one minute, but each seems equally crowded.

What about taking a taxi?  The short trip from the Rialto bridge to the station, near our hotel, cost around £30.  The boats don't travel so quickly, but they do ruthlessly drive at (and I do mean, drive directly at) the gondolas; let's not talk about the price of a gondola trip.

Venice is a city of contradictions.

I write to you on a Friday night from the San Carlo square in the heart of Venice's tourist district.  We are sat in the Caffé Florian, under the moon and in the shadow of the Basilica di San Marco, listening to a 6-piece string orchestra. 

At times like this, you'd be hard pushed not to describe Venice as the most romantic city in the world.

Then again, the coffee we've just had cost around £7, and later we'll have the choice between taking our lives into our own hands on the water bus, or taking a second mortgage and a water taxi.

All aboard the train to Venice...?

What is it about trains on this holiday?

Arriving at Como, there was the issue with the attendant at the station.  Leaving Como and heading to Venice, it was another old-fashioned problem: being too late for the train.

In principle, we'd left more than enough time.  We planned to catch an earlier-than-necessary ferry back to Como, leaving a good hour and a half to make our way from the ferry terminal to the railway station.  Time enough to maybe have some lunch on the way through, not that we had high expectations of Como after our first visit earlier in the week.

The ferry was late leaving Bellagio but made good time down the lake, giving us just over an hour for lunch and transit to the station.  Lunch was easily solved: we ordered some quick snacks from a restaurant on the square, whilst Vicky had a quick look around the church.  Still basking in time, we left the restaurant and started our walk - dragging our various luggage - to Como station.

Turns out that we'd got two things wrong.

Firstly, contrary to first impressions, Como is actually quite nice.  Our first impressions were wrong; away from the lakeside, there are beautiful streets with elegant Italian boutiques, worthy of a later return visit.

Secondly, and more critically, my (hereditary?) sense of direction doesn't work so famously well in small, nested streets of high buildings.  Well, that's my excuse anyway. 

By the time we hit the main road, we were 10 minutes from the train leaving without us, but who knows where we actually were?  No where near the station, that's for sure.  There might be about 100 places marked on the huge road sign, but I can guarantee that the station wasn't one of them.  (Actually, after my experience in speaking Italian at the station earlier in the week, I can't be so sure, but none of the little pictures on the sign looked like a train, so I reason that it can't have been on there).

The one thing that I knew for certain was that we'd come much too far away from the shore, so we followed the main road back towards the town, but still nothing looked familiar. 

We took a random turn to the left and ended up at an almost-comical movie-like crossroads: my instincts told me to turn right, even though we could see nothing of interest at the end of the road.  Vicky suggested turning left, citing the mass of coaches on the road as a good indicator of a possible station.  In any case, the debate was inconsequential: the time of our train had passed already; we were left to consider how we would complete our journey, thinking already that it might involve another trip through our least-favourite station, the dirty Milan Central.

We headed to the right, much slower now, realising the race had been lost in any case.  At the end of the road, we found the first and only sign we had seen for the station, helpfully right outside its doors. 

This is probably the right time to point out that the Italian railway system is most definitely not as efficient as the ruthlessly-managed Swiss railways.

Even though the signs indicated to the contrary (something which seems common in Italy), the train to Venice was delayed and was pulling in to the station as we arrived, some 10 minutes after the scheduled time.  (I reflected that, had the same happened in Switzerland, scores of people would have lost their jobs; not just for the late-running of the train, but for the poor management of the information screens.)

The battle wasn't quite over; having boarded the train, we had to navigate our way through it to our seats.  Normally this shouldn't been too traumatic, but there were a group of Americans trying to find their seats, complete with huge bags and huger egos.  Being British, we stood politely in the aisle and waited for all of the fuss to die down. 

As we waited, I wondered just who had been luckiest with the train being delayed as it was?  I think it was the attendant at Como station.

Bellagi-oh-my-word

After leaving Switzerland, we had the long train journey to Milan Central station (the dirtiest station in the world?) before heading onwards, again by train, towards Como. 

Oh, Como.  Now, let's just reflect together on how lucky we were not to book a hotel there - it might sit at the foot of Lake Como, but it's congested, unfriendly and the lake is its sole salvation, from what we could see.

On arrival at the station, I thought it could useful to buy our ticket onwards to Venice for later in the week. 

The kiosk was a two-window affair.  At the first window, there was nothing unusual, but the second window was occupied by the attendant and an elderly Italian guy who seemed to be getting increasingly exasperated trying to get some train times written down on his piece of paper.  The process seemed further hindered by his poor hearing, which itself wasn't helped by the thick glass which separated him from the attendant; rather than speaking into the microphone, as the attendant repeatedly indicated for him to do, the guy just shouted louder and louder.  The transaction ended with the attendant grabbing the guy's bit of paper through the drawer and making a series of scribbles on it, before handing it back to him.

Now it was my turn.  But I wasn't ready. 

I wasn't ready for an attendant who didn't speak a word of English.  I wasn't ready with my (still unpurchased) Italian phrase-book to make myself understood.  Most of all, I wasn't ready for a true, deep, Italian arrogance of an attendant who was going to go out of his way to nothing to make this transaction any easier.

But, how hard can it be to book a train ticket using gestures alone?  Quite hard, as it goes.

"To Venice": easy enough, he managed to find it within his heart to forgive me for not using the Italian pronunciation of the name.

"On Thursday": Jesus, this was simply the hardest thing in the world to communicate, made agonisingly worse by the large calendar that was hung on the wall just behind the window.  I gestured repeatedly towards it (I couldn't touch it, of course, because it was behind the thick glass, whose true purpose was becoming increasingly clear) but he was having none of it.  Holding up and counting my fingers to indicate the date for Thursday?  No chance.  Ingeniously, I tried reading the Italian for "Thursday" from the calendar, but there was no way he was going to be tolerant of bad pronunciation twice in the same transaction.  To be honest, I'm not sure how we got there in the end: it could have been my shouting (I had much more sympathy for the old guy from before now), it could have been that my face told him that I was ready to use the queuing barrier to physically smash the glass to get to him, or it could have been telepathy.

"After 12 o'clock": he wanted this thing done now too, so he was prepared to accept finger counting for this.  Numbers over 10 are, of course, more difficult; I wonder if he understood the significance of the way that I indicated "2" after I'd done "10". 

"For two": thankfully, I'd already worked out an acceptable gesture for this, and I was more than happy to use it.  Repeatedly.

As he printed the tickets, I contemplated the other crisis (we had a total of 7 Euros with us, and there was no cash machine at the station), but I was in no mood for second round with the attendant trying to get some 'gesture directions'. 

Instead, we headed out to the streets and found a monument that gave more of a helping hand than the guy at the station.

 

We dragged the cases through the streets of Como, taking delight (and cash) at the machine we found en route, until we arrived at the ferry terminal.  The fast boat to Bellagio was leaving immediately; on our 40-minute journey up the lake, we reflected that Italy was nowhere near as nice, or as friendly, as Switzerland. 

But, as we talked, we hadn't been to Bellagio. 

Oh, my, word.