Ravenna and on to Venice
We made it to port right on time. There were a number of passengers who had early flights and were getting a bit nervous.
We were some of the very first passengers to board on this cruise and some of the very last to disembark. The cruise was originally scheduled to end in Venice but recently Venice has stopped cruise ships from coming into the Venice port so we disembarked from Revenna, about a 2 1/2 hour bus ride away. We boarded the bus for the long ride to Venice since we had planned early on to visit Venice until next Tuesday and fly home from there.
The bus dropped us off at the car parking lot outside Venice where we had to catch water transportation to the hotel.
It was pretty confusing to find where to go from this area called Tranchetto, and a number of the other passengers on our bus got pretty angry wanting to know what to do. There were not enough water taxis for people and it sounded like some of the people had reservations. We were not stanidn there that long when people got angry, but it was confusing. Azamara could have done a much better job communicating exactly where we were getting off the bus and preparing for those that arrived. Most of the people staynding with us were going to one hotel. We were headed to a very small old hotel so I wan’t sure we were even in the right place. I asked one of the people trying to help the othersabout how to access public transportation and she kindly took us to the public water bus stop (Vaporetto) just a few feet away and helped us buy tickets. She then told us to get on the water bus in either direction and it would take us to the stop nearest our hotel. Well, she was partly right. We did get to our hotel but, the water buses go in a loop. We were 2 stops away if we went in one direction and about 30 if we went in the other direction. Of course we chose the wrong direction. On our ride I was able to pull up the bus map and found that the stop we could get off at on this line was one away from the one nearest our hotel. It didn’t look like that far of a walk so we just stayed on and got off at the stop nearest our hotel and walked, with all of our baggage. We didn’t realize it until we got to the first bridge that our short walk involved 4 bridges. And it turned out pretty warm so it was quite a challenge.
Our hotel. the Hotel Abadessa, is in the Cannaregio section of Venice, down an unlighted alley behind a big green door. Going through the door you enter a beautiful garden which leads to the back entrance to the hotel. The main entrance is on a canal.. The hotel is an ancient building forwhich we need to find the history. It is filled with antiques. Our room looks like it was decorated for guests in the 14th century. If someone said that Marco Polo stopped here, I woudl believe them.
After freshening up we walked around the area for a while and then headed to the meeting point for a food tour which was conveniently right near our hotel. The company was good, the food was good and our guide was lively, but had a very soft voice and a very think Italian accent so I don’t think we picked up much of the history.
Tomorrow we are doing a walking tour of Venice. Our Vaporetto ride got us pretty much around all of the island so now we’ve had a bird’s eye view. We’re supposed to get a gondola ride too. It’s one of those touristy thngs you just need to do in Venice.