Venezia

Train time tables, tour offerings, white lines on the road, speed signs are all just to give you a guideline.  There is no guarantee that what you read or pay for is going to be in the realm of your expectations.

As we left Deiva, watching the French family give up and make their way back out of the train station we checked to see how much time we had between our Sestri Levante to Milan train and then our Milan to Venice train.  17mins.  And for those who have traveled through Europe using these train stations - you know how enormous they are.  Our train leaves on time, but paranoia starts to set in and we track our train to make sure it's staying on time (even though there is nothing we can do about it).  First 2 hours are fine.  Then we start losing time, and by the time we get to Milan we are power walking again, Kaia’s stressed out and our poor Zach just internalises this.  I can honestly say I have no idea what the Milan train station looks like.  I know we organised ourselves early, to be one of the first off the train, used our generally large and imposing pack mule to set everyone else's expectations we were getting off first and we power walked from line 17 down to line 9 to make our Venice train.

Venice Mestre station is large and with only two ways to get out of the station we of course pick the wrong exit.  It is quite nice to have gotten to this part and for there to be no more complaining from the kids that we made a mistake and have to walk all the way back through the station and over the opposite way.  They generally get it now.  Parents don’t know everything.  The other day in Cinque Terre we watched as one lady got on the train and somehow her mate didn’t and even though she banged on the door, she got left behind.  We have discussed this extensively with the kids, and this experience really hit home for Kaia.  She really needed to talk about it and became very clingy for the day.  While Zach is an audio learner, Kaia is very much kinesthetic, so this situation happening right in front of her really hit home.  This combined with the Lady who likely had schizophrenia telling me how beautiful my kids were and then having arguments with herself cemented some things in Kaia’s brain about safety finally.

We arrive at our campsite to a pool party with a live house dj and the kids immediately forget that we just made them walk in 29 degree heat, 3km with luggage!

Returning to Venice after 20 years and nothing has changed.  It's a unique city, both its life as a seafaring community, beautiful architecture precariously perched on the waters edge, together with its stink of human waste and pickpockets.

I tell everyone that this winding city is worse than Seville’s streets and after a few wrong turns we make it to Saint Marco Piazza.  We have booked a private tour of Doges palace specifically aimed at kids 7 to 14, where the kids have to solve a crime and learn the history of Venice and the Doge’s at the same time.  It's a pretty well done tour created by the museum, and very proud of its heritage. We learnt some new words (surprise they are animals) that are the venetian dialect and not the same in Italian.  

Wandering the streets trying not to use all our batteries with GPS we enter a cool trattoria where again I have to wonder about Italian expectations vs reality.  I ask for a prosecco and Gareth a beer.  The waiter asks small or medium.  I say small - and seriously he says - it's tiny and shows me about 2cm between his fingers as an example.  So I say sure medium then.  Does the same thing to Gareth so he gets the large beer rather than the small.  Out comes almost half a bottle of prosecco in my glass and a litre of beer in Gareth’s mug.  The food was spectacular, a seafood pizza for me, Zach is a demon for Carbonara, Kaia’s a margherita pizza girl and Gareth is probably eating his way through a small nation's pig stocks.  But then again, maybe all food tastes good after half a bottle of wine and a litre of beer?

Next is to tick off the Gondola ride.  I didn’t do it last time as I was a poor 20 something and i’m hyper conscious that this is likely to be my last trip to Venice.  Talking to Gareth, he’s honest about this place, he’s glad he’s come, not going to come back and for the first time he’s missing home. Venice is so hot, so many people, stinky and even though it's surrounded by water, too far removed from the way we like to live.  The Gondola is a relaxing ride and gives the feet some down time before we start the trek back to our bus.  You have to admire the gondoliers, they are very talented in their maneuvering of tight quarters and other boats.

A thunderstorm is threatening as we get back to the campsite and everyone is leaving the pool area, so we strip off and have all the pools to ourselves for a full 10 mins (hahah) before the storm hits and the lifeguard is blowing his whistle to get out.