Travel Day to Venice

Big travel schedule in April for the Ferguson Four. The kids had two weeks off of school so we double dipped trips with Barcelona, a couple of days back to do laundry, then off to Venice.

Italy is a pretty amazing country I have to admit. We drove through northern Italy in our first week here on the way to Nice, France. We stayed overnight at Lake Como on the way. Over Christmas we drove through the Mont Blanc tunnel from Chamonix, France to get to an Italian ski resort. That was maybe our best day of skiing on that trip. Earlier this year we spent a week in Rome with a day trip to southern Italy via bus to see Pompeii. Next April we are planning on staying for a week in the Florence area touring the Tuscany region. This week it is the northeast coast next to the Adriatic Sea for Venice.

Day 1: Travel

This is the first time the whole family has traveled by train during our time in Europe. A few weeks ago David experienced rail travel on his trip to Berlin. Since the park and ride does not allow overnight or extended parking at the local train stop we had to make a plan. All four of us and our luggage drove to the Unterschleissheim S-Bahn stop, Cindy took the kids and the luggage while I drove the car back home. I hopped on my bicycle and rode back to meet up with the family and get on the S-Bahn. This actually worked pretty well and we were on our way to the main train station in Munich, Hauptbahnhof. We arrived a few minutes early which was planned because I had some questions about our travel. The bahn.de website is good, but it is lacking in specific information, a lot. In this case we had reservations for 1st class seats on the direct train to Venice, but the site would not let me reserve actual seat assignments. I wanted to ask someone what to do once the train pulled up. Think about it, if we just go sit down somewhere, the person with that seat reserved is going to kick us out and we will have to move all of our stuff. I could see this happening over and over.

The first window that I approached was shown as an information window. I asked "do you speak English?", she answered "a  little bit", standard answer all of the time regardless of their knowledge of the language. I think it depends on what you want from them. This lady was not helpful. Once I finally got her to look up and I asked about my predicament she told me to go across the way to the ticket reservation window and ask for a reserved seat. I told her that her window was labeled exactly the same as the one she was sending me over towards. She was done with me, and sent me along. I went across the way, this lady was worse. "Do you speak English?" "A little bit." I asked, she told me there was nothing that she could do, "get on the train and look". Me, "what do you mean look?" She said it again, same thing. Then she told me to go to the travel center. This went around and around a few more times before I told her that maybe she should try to use her role in customer service to be nice and helpful to people. She did not like that very much.

Now I go to the travel center and find a dude waiting that looks in a better mood. I ask, "do you speak English?", he answers with a British accent, "a little bit". Really, he did, I am not kidding. This guy tells me that there are no seats available to assign and that we may not even get a seat. I explained that we had a confirmed ticket for four 1st class seats, this did not seem to impress him at all. He was telling me that not only would we probably not sit in 1st class, we may not get a seat on the train at any level since we do not have assigned seats. Now I am pissed off.

For the record, the 1st class seat on these trains is not a big deal or extravagant cost. Since we are planning several trips via train I purchased a discount travel card that gets us in the 1st class area and we still pay less than normal ticket prices.

At this point Cindy is calling me to tell me our train has arrived and people are boarding. I rush over to the track and we start loading up. On this train the 1st class car has cabins with six seats, three on each side facing each other and the aisle for the cart is outside of the door that you can slide shut. We slid into the very first compartment to get out of the way of the other people boarding. At this point I am explaining to Cindy that I have no idea what to do or if we are going to have a seat. With our stuff out of the way I walked down the cart looking for someone to ask what to do. It was now that things started changing for the better. Going down the train I saw name tags labeled for each seat in all of the other six seat cabin sections. I walked back to where I left Cindy and the kids, no names were listed. Right then the train guy, porter dude, walked by and we asked what to do. I told him that I noticed no names were there, he said it was because those seats were not reserved, JACKPOT. We sat down really quick and shut our door. It was still 20 minutes before the train left and people kept boarding. There were four of us with six seats, what joker was going to dare sit with us for this six hour ride?

What started out as an epic failure ended in sweet victory. I guess everyone else had assigned seats except for us. We ended up with extra seats and our own cabin for the whole journey.

This is going to be hard to beat as far as scenery goes on trains I think. A ride through Bavaria, into the Alps in Austria then northern Italy. I was trying to watch some shows I had on the computer but was too distracted by all of the darn scenery. As soon as we got into the mountains I was taking picture after picture. These pics are from inside a moving train and I think they still turned out pretty spectacular.

Of course all of this was lost on the kids. They were happy to have space, battery power, and devices. I think the ride went by pretty quick for them too.

Part of this route we had seen before from the autobahn when we drove to Nice last year. This was much more relaxing and I was able to enjoy the views much more.

You could tell once we made it to Italy. Nothing but vineyards for the rest of the journey. It is mind blowing to think how many different wine makers there are just in this little part of Italy. Above the mountain was almost a sheer cliff. This terrain went from flat to almost straight up.

Beautiful waterfall.

After the train arrived the plan was to walk to our apartment.

 In total it was over a kilometer through the streets of Venice, dragging suitcases in a very unfamiliar place famous for people getting lost.

We were mentally prepared for it, except for all of the stairs going up and back down across the bridges. I knew about the narrow walking paths and the maze of streets, but I did not think about the stairs. We did it though, twenty minutes later we were there, in the middle of Venice. While trying to figure out which button to ring for our apartment manager an old lady opened the door and started speaking to us in Italian. Then she introduced her husband to us, I think. He also only spoke Italian. She kept telling us to wait. We were not sure what was happening. It turns out the regular apartment manager was not there and this was her mother and father. The old lady was going to let us in.

It was late, we had not had any food other than snacks on the train, we just wanted to drop our bags and go eat. Not so much. The property where we are staying is completely enclosed by a brick wall, has multiple units and a full size tennis court along with a large garden. I can't imagine what this piece of land is worth, a tennis court, really? We start out by dragging our luggage all the way around the property to the other side to get to a courtyard entrance. She shows us how to unlock the gate, turn on the lights, open the apartment door. It turns out our apartment is right next door to her apartment. It would have been a ten foot walk through the other door to get into the courtyard. I suppose we had to have the grand tour so we knew how to get in later. She proceeded to show us every inch of the apartment, open every drawer and cabinet in the kitchen, show us how every appliance works...........all while speaking Italian and us not really understanding much at all. The next thing that she did was show us the page in the house manual explaining that they are wine makers and they can sell us some of their own wine. For five euros a bottle we had to try some. Then we had to do paperwork. Pay the tourist tax in cash, look at the map, get restaurant suggestions, oh my gosh CAN WE PLEASE GO EAT!!!! She was really sweet but I was done.

Finally she finished with her process, I am going to give her daughter a hard time for not letting me know that she would not be here to greet us. All in good fun I assure, the apartment is great and exceeds expectations. We located a pizza place just a few steps from the apartment.

The restaurant was good. They had walls decorated with American sports team logos, played popular music, and the food was good. I ate so much I could not even have a glass of wine that night from our hosts winery. Day 1 was done, we unpacked and settled in for a good rest.