Summary of trip - Part 8

So, now it's the early morning of Tuesday, July 8th, and I have been awakened about 2 o'clock in the morning by the sound of nothing. The nothing that I'm not hearing is our air conditioner not being on. I had become very accustomed to the sound of our air conditioner running. And while it wasn't the greatest air conditioner that I ever felt, it was much better that nothing at all. The room grew incredibly warm without the damp cool air that the unit blew. I got up out of bed to investigate and discovered the entire room was without any power. It was completely dark, with the exception of a rather bright emergency light that now lite up the entire lower section of out suite. I checked the room circuit breakers and tried resetting them, but to no avail. I looked outside the window and there appeared to be power as I saw the street lights on.

I quickly got dressed an walked outside where I saw another person who seemed to be investigating the same problem. Luckily, they too were American, so I spoke to them, and they too were in the dark. I went up to the front desk, and the night watchman was sitting outside, and told me in very broken English, that there was no power. Now at this time, I had no idea what this might mean. Was there no power in the hotel, or in the neighborhood, or Rome, or the whole country. I was thinking about the previous day, with the transit strike. Maybe the Italian electrical workers were now taking their turn to strike. I was also thinking that we had a train in the morning, and I was worried whether the train to Venice would be affected. So I went back to the room, and opened the windows to allow some of the cooler night air in. The open windows helped to cool off the room, so we were able to attempt to get some sleep. Luckily, after about an hour, the power came back, so we were able once again to have our air conditioning and some well needed sleep.

So after having breakfast, we asked the front desk to order a cab to Rome's main train station. The person behind the desk said it was about a fifteen minute drive to the station. The cab finally showed up and we had another suicidal drive through the streets of Rome. We made it to the station with fifteen minutes to spare. We boarded the train, which was a very modern Eurostar Italia train for a four and half hour ride to Venice. The train was nice, comfortable, and fast, although some of the things on board like the window shade didn't work. Our tour guide from the previous day had mentioned that electronic devices, such as ticket machines, phones, ATMs, etc had a 50/50 chance of working in Italy.

The first class compartment that we were in was filled with American tourists. I spoke with a few people from Tennessee and Alabama who had just come from Naples, stayed a few days in Rome and were continuing to Florence. They mentioned that they were not impressed with Naples at all after having spent 3 days there. They said it was a very dirty and crowded city. I asked them whether they knew about the garbage strike that has been going on there for the last six months. They hadn't heard about it, but after learning about it from me, they said that explained why there was enormous piles of trash on all the streets. I asked them whether they had done any nice side trips from Naples, such as Pompeii, Capri, or Mount Vesuvius. They said that they hadn't. I was surprise at that, and thought they made a big mistake having missed out on some incredible places, when they were so close to where they were. I guess this proves that you really need to research your trips before you go.

After our four and a half hour ride, which went pretty quickly, we arrived in the very beautiful city of Venice. The very first thing I noticed was how much cooler, and drier the weather was in Venice. It was so comfortable compared with the weather in Rome. The station's entrance is located right on the Grand Canal, so it is very scenic when you exit. We had a fifteen or twenty minute walk to the Cannaregio section of Venice, where our hotel was situated. It is possible to get there by water bus or private water taxi, but after being on the train so long, we thought the walk would be good.

After about a twenty minute walk with map in hand, we slowly found our way to our hotel which was named Residenza Cannaregio. It was a charming hotel and very modern. The building was build in the 17th century as a monastery. However, inside it was very very modern structure. Our room was upgraded from a garden view to a canal view. It was very cool that the hotel actually had an entrance on the canal, to facilitate visitors who arrived by water taxi. Here are some of the pictures of the place. The first couple are the view from our window.





The hotel was very charming and was definitely away from the tourist areas. It was nice living in any area where the average Venetian lived. In the mornings and evening, you would see people on their way to work and school. Venice is also a much cleaner city than Rome. It did not suffer from the problem with graffiti that Rome had. The neighborhood of Cannaregio has nice wide sidewalks along the canals. They are filled with charming local restaurants and small shops. The local people also seemed friendlier than their Roman counterparts.


One terrific thing about staying in a non-tourist area was seeing the inner workings of Venetian society. Since Venice is a city built on a countless number of small islands, travel and commerce must take place on the network of canals that interlace the city. We got a big kick out of seeing the DHL and Fed Ex boats, or the boats which collected the garbage every few days or the construction boats that had small cranes on them to work on construction sites. We saw many boats making deliveries to the homes and shops in the area. It was very interesting seeing how things work in a city built on the water.

During our exploration of the area, we discovered a touristy area about ten minutes walk from our hotel. We actually found a McDonald's there and the kids were glad to have some typical American style food for a change. After dinner we settled back for a quiet evening at the hotel and enjoyed a good night sleep after a long travel day.