We decide to take a room for the day since we are taking a sleeper to Paris tonight. The clerks tell us we can have a discount as long as we pay in cash. Hmmmmm? We are happy to collude in the arrangement. We take the opportunity to cut our sightseeing day short, sleep a little later and laze over breakfast in the garden.
We choose to visit the Ca� Rezzonica, a beautiful Palazzo on the Grand Canal in the Dorsodura District. As usual we wander the streets until we find it down an unmarked alley. It contains, not only paintings but also murals, furniture, statuary and many other artifact from opulent 18th Century Venice.
We have a leisurely lunch on our way back to the hotel via Piazza San Marco and after showering and changing, head for the nearby Sta. Lucia train station. We stop to buy provender for the overnight trip and stroll into the station with lots of time to board our train. I glance at the departure board and I don�t see our train number on it. I begin to feel the first stirrings of panic. I look again at our tickets and realize they show a Mestre departure. Mestre is the mainland station for Venice. Now, we are in full panic mode. We find a train leaving in two minutes, going to Mestre, that will get us there with about five minutes to spare. We run for it, jump on and with beating hearts congratulate ourselves on recovering so quickly. We make Mestre with time to spare and gratefully board our Paris bound train thinking how lucky and plucky we are.
When I have time to think about it and after realizing our train actually did leave from Sta. Lucia, I begin to feel more stupid than lucky. First, I didn�t really look at the tickets until I was in the station. Second our train was there but since the departure board is organized by hours, I looked under the 8:00 PM to 9:00 PM section whereas our train was in the 7:00 PM to 8:00 PM section. It obviously left Sta. Lucia earlier than Mestre. Duhhhhh! I learned a valuable lesson, that is to pay more attention to the details when buying tickets in advance.
We have the compartment to ourselves until we get to The Lake District when we are joined by an anthropology professor from Montreal and his daughter. We have an absorbing conversation. He speaks five languages. He was born in the Lake District and has lived in four different countries. I am always in awe of people who are multi-lingual. I struggle just to learn simple phrases and here is someone who not only speaks English as well as I do but is evidently fluent in Italian and French and also speaks Spanish and Portuguese. His daughter, interestingly, only speaks French fluently.
We finally set up the sleeping arrangements around 11:30 and I crawl into my berth and sleep very soundly. Tom does not, unfortunately. He blames it on claustrophobia brought on by being in the upper berth. Makes sense to me. We arrive in Paris about 6:30 AM. at Bercy Station, which is basically a Metro hub rather than a train station. It is near the relatively famous Gare De Lyon, gateway to the Cote d'Azure. We are both excited to be in Paris. Lafayette, we have arrived.
When I return to the hotel, I am happy to discover that Tom�s back has improved to the point that he wants to do some sightseeing this afternoon. We decide on our itinerary. Aside from the most important decision, where to have lunch, we choose to visit the Chiesa (church) Frari in the San Polo section and the Gallerie dell�Academia in Dorsoduro.
The church is surprisingly beautiful. I say surprisingly because it isn�t as heavily visited as many other attractions in Venice. Artworks created for this church, by Giovanni Bellini, Titian and Donatello grace this place. You can see photos of the church on my Venice photo site. After the church visit, we find an outdoor caf� for a late lunch. We struggle with the waiter to get what we want and finally give up and accept what he brings us.
After lunch, we wander the lanes and alleys of southeastern Venice and more by accident than design we manage to locate Gallerie dell�Academia. Even though the building isn�t air-conditioned, we spend a couple hours inspecting the incredible paintings covering ten centuries of Italian history. It is here that Tom announces he is only interested in looking at masterpieces. He says he just doesn�t have time for minor works. I suspect that, if he�s like me, he also doesn�t have enough �ram� in his brain to absorb it all. After two hours, I go into intellectual overload. We take a Vaparetto back to our hotel. I grab a short snooze and do some reading in air-conditioned comfort.
In the early evening, we find a relatively cheap place (this is Venice, after all) where we can drink beer and people watch. We are particularly fascinated by what appears to be a North African group including children who are truly enjoying themselves.
We decide to splurge on dinner at a restaurant overlooking the canal. We should have known we might be making a mistake eating at a place imaginatively named, Ristorante Roma. It even has candles at the tables. Well, the view is great but everything else is, at best, pedestrian: service with a sneer, frozen and canned vegetables, oily roasted potatoes, and fatty veal. We order off an over-priced wine list and our selection turns out to be more acidic than fruity. The meals denouement comes when our waiter, on one of his infrequent appearances, announces that he wants to be sure we understand that the service charge is not a tip. It is the only time we see him attempt a smile. Tom and I have problems swallowing our laughter. Since it is my turn to pay, I deliver an old insult remembered from my days as a traveling executive by leaving him a few small coins and insuring he sees me doing it.
This encounter is one of the reasons I titled this section, �Venal Venice.� Both Tom and I agree that we were treated far better in Florence and Rome than here. No question this place is beautiful, though decaying. During our time here, we ran into only one waiter who wasn�t disinterested or downright surly. I still am having trouble accepting the idea of a cover charge just to eat at a restaurant. The hotel personnel were O.K., albeit a little greedy. I think the problem is quite simply too many tourists and too few residents. I can see how the constant crush of tourists would get on people�s nerves but that same situation has not created the same effect in places like Florence, Siena or San Gimignano, all of which are similarly inundated with tourists.
Tom and I slip back to our hotel for a Sambuca nightcap. Tom�s feeling good that his back held up. We have a long day tomorrow including an overnight train trip to Paris. It�s time to crash.
We grab a taxi outside the station. We will be staying at the Hotel Atlanta Frochot, which is described as being ideally located between Montmartre and the Paris Opera House and within walking distance of a major Metro Station. The taxi driver has some difficulty figuring out where Rue Frochot is but we finally get rolling. It�s a long ride from the station. As we near the hotel, the neighborhood becomes tackier and tackier. When we finally arrive, Tom and I realize we are in the center of the Pigalle red light district or, as it was lovingly referred to by WW II GIs, Pig Alley.
(Continued)
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