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Tips :
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Salzburg to Venice
Just as we started to become accustomed to the Austrian salutations of "enschuligen sie" (excuse me) and "danke schon" (thank you), we had to move on to a new country !
Our train route to Venice is a circuitous one but it certainly took us through some interesting parts of the country. The first leg was from Salzburg to Innsbruck and from there to Verona and finally on to Venice.
We were quite spoilt by the top conditions of the Austrian trains - clean, modern, well-equipped and spacious. From Innsbruck, we transferred to trains operated by the Italian railways and these trains were a complete opposite to the Austrian ones - dirty, old, poorly-equipped, cramped and smelly !
We had our usual problems due to not having bought reserved tickets and we had to scramble across multiple carriages. Finally, we had to split up with the us scattered across three carriages. The worst part of all was that we were all in smoking carriages !
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Brenner Pass
We crossed the Austrian-Italian border at Brenner Pass which is the lowest opening in the Tyrolean Alps which separated the two countries. Due to its strategic position, this Pass has played a role in both World Wars.
An interesting thing happened near Brenner - it snowed !! We couldn't believe that we were passing through snowed covered territory in October.
1. It snowed near the Brenner Pass Austria and Italy constrasted in so many ways and the weather was a prime example. On the Austrian side of the Alps, it was cold and wet but on the Italian side, it was hot and dry !
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Venice
We decided to abandon the antiquated Italian train at Verona and we upgraded to the EuroStar instead. We decided that it was worth the extra cost to travel in comfort for the rest of our trip.
Today's train journey was the longest for our whole trip - it took us close to 6 hours to arrive in Venice which included the time we spent waiting for connecting trains at Innsbruck and Verona.
It was late in the afternoon when we arrived at Venice.
2. The long bridge that connected Venice with the mainland.
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Sunsets and Moonrises
We took a vaporetto (water bus) from the train station to St Mark's Square where our hotel is located. Travelling through the canals of Venice was an interesting experience in itself but we were also treated to a glorious sunset on one side of the canal, and a magnificent moonrise on the other ! Trying to take a moonrise photo on a fast moving boat through the Venetian canal was a tricky endeavour indeed. I was pleased to manage to pull off a couple of pretty reasonable shots of the occasion.
4. There was a huge full moon on the our first night in Venice
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Lost in Venice
We fully expected to have trouble navigating the labrythian alleyways of Venice and our expectations were certainly met ! By the time we got off the vaporetto at St Mark's Square, it was already dark. William and Jimmy volunteered to find us the route to our hotel. From the map, the hotel seemed to be no more than 5 minutes walk away.
But the trouble was that the map that we bought (they don't give out free maps around here) did not fully show all the lanes or alleyways nor all their names ! We were pretty much lost as soon as we walked into one of the lanes. I think we were fully lost for close to 15 to 20 minutes before finally finding our bearings to our hotel.
It was a great introduction to the city if not for the fact that we have been lugging our bags along this maze !
Our hotel was a simple one, overlooking a small canal. The rooms were small, but clean and comfortable.
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Tips :
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St Mark's Square
We had dinner at a small pizzeria near our hotel. The food was nice and relatively inexpensive. In retrospect, we found the gelato to be the cheapest in Venice compared to all the other Italian towns and cities we visited later on this trip.
After dinner, we were all keen to walk to the nearby St Mark's Square to check it out. It was quite a surreal scene when we got there. The entire square was lit up by hundreds of lights and there were quite a crowd of people dining al fresco at the many restraurants lining the square. There were also a number of live performances to entertain the guests.
The cost to enjoy this live entertainment sitting down at a restraurant was astronimical ! Some of us decided to sit down and enjoy the coffee, while the other half (myself included) decided it was better value for money to just walk around the square and be entertained that way instead.
We passed the famous Bridge of Sighs on our way to the Square. This bridge is apparently so named because it was used to move prisoners from the prison on one side of the bridge to the execution chambers on the other.
6. Some live entertainment at the Square. 7. St Mark's Square at night
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That's a wrap for day six.