Tuesday 5 June 2012 Venice/Barcelona

We were up with plenty of time to spare for breakfast, so spent a little time out on the pool deck. We tried out the loungers for the first time!

We were off the ship about 8:30 and went to the place at the cruise ship dock where they had luggage storage. The sign said they opened at 8 AM, but it was all closed up. There was another sign on the door that said “Back in 5 minutes,” but after waiting five minutes with no sign of anyone to open the place, we decided there must be a luggage storage place by the bus plaza and made our way there. It was slightly more expensive, but we saved a round trip on the people mover, so it was almost a wash.

We were on our way through the maze of narrow Venetian streets shortly after 9.

We were able to follow the occasional signs to the famous Rialto Bridge and St. Mark’s Square. We were taking pictures at the bridge

when a fellow speaking heavily accented English asked if we would like him to take our picture. Normally, you say yes, the person takes one or two pictures, and you are on your way. This guy took about six pictures and was directing us where to stand (We chose to stay where we were.) and to take off our glasses (Who are those people?). I was beginning to suspect some kind of con or that he was going to run off with off with my camera, although he was an old guy that I could have easily run down. When he finally quit taking pictures, he began to tell us his life story. We didn’t think he was ever going to quit. We finally saw an opening to escape, whereupon he asked us for a Euro for taking our picture. It was well worth it to escape!

We then went to the square and wandered around for a while.

Celeste was feeling the heat, but we found this cool and shady little park right on the Grand Canal.

We then went for gelato. I had dark chocolate. It tasted kind of like a Jello pudding, but better and with gelato texture. Pretty good!

How does a city function with no streets? Well, with boats that replace every vehicle imaginable. Here is a taxi

and an ambulance

and a fire (boat) truck

and a garbage (boat) truck

and a courier service

and delivery vehicles

and a traffic jam

and, of course, a gondola.

And here is a busy pedestrian intersection of five or more interconnected bridges.

And here is something that I found interesting on several occasions throughout our trip. Was all the effort to miniaturize cameras wasted by the coming of the tablet? They have a heck of a viewing screen though.

We wanted to be sure to be back at the bus plaza in plenty of time and came through with flying colours, returning around noon. We looked around that area for a bit, then settled in for a sandwich and beer at a café.

We caught our bus at 2 and arrived at the airport less than half an hour later. Unfortunately, we learned that we could not check in for another couple of hours, so we explored, downloaded and culled pictures, and wrote blog to kill some time.

When we arrived at the airport it was not apparent where the counter was for Air One, so we asked at information where we were told it was among a nearby group of generic check-in positions and that we could check in two hours before our 6:05 PM departure. Around 4:30 nothing had happened yet, so I asked one of the girls at the generic counter. She told us which position would be Air One and I thought she said it would be open one hour before departure. Approaching 5 PM there was still no sign of any action. Then I spotted a digital departure schedule. Why didn’t we think of that earlier?! When I looked at the board, there were no Air One flights and no flights to Barcelona!! The girl at information directed us to the Alitalia desk, agents for Air One. The lady there said that our flight had been cancelled!! We were rescheduled on June 7! They did not have any contact information for us, so were unable to advise us. I explained that that would not work, as we had to catch our flight out of Barcelona on June 6. She said there was another flight tonight on another airline. We raced over there and, 400 Euro later, were booked out at 10:25 PM, arriving at 12:15 AM. Let’s hope there are no more surprises! There is practically no seating in the terminal. We have been sitting in the cafeteria for three hours with almost five more to go. Hopefully there will be better seating after we check in and go through security.

Boy, was that an understatement! The check-in area was very plain and old fashioned looking with almost no seating. After security it is like a different world. Modern décor, ample and comfortable seating, good food service, and numerous shops, including high end names like Hugo Boss, Ralph Lauren, Dolce + Gabana, and many more. Our flight was called a little bit late, but that was only the beginning of the delay as we had to board a bus and wait for a second bus to fill before we drove to the aircraft. Then, even though everyone had assigned seating, there was a mad scramble to the boarding stairs. We took off at 11 and arrived at 12:30 AM, arrived in our hotel room by 1, and were settled in to sleep by 1:30. We have the nicest room of our whole trip, including a sitting room and a jet tub, but won’t have much of a chance to use it. The 5-10 minute cab ride was 35 Euros, about $47!

Weather: sunny, temperature 25C on the bus to the Venice airport and on arrival at Barcelona airport, light wind. Thank goodness we rescheduled our touring for today. Other people who joined our cruise in Venice 24 days ago and were now returning said that they had pouring rain here and in Dubrovnik at the beginning of their cruise.