Day 39: By lunchtime we'll be in Venice

A commute day today.  Boring.  Well not too boring.  I mean I could be sitting at home, or working…
Germany is a very scenic country to drive through.  From Salzburg, the countryside slowly changed from the mountains, to verdant green countryside.
Within not much more than 2 hours we’d dropped off the car and were at the airport.  Very early.  I prefer to be early at airports, but this was very early. And airports aren’t the cheapest of places to eat either.  Anyway, they had my favourite weisswurst so I took advantage of my last chance to have this, and also grabbed a nice huge weissbeer, even though it was about 9 in the morning.  I wasn’t the only one either.

Eventually we boarded and then an hour later we were in Mestre, Italy! Mestre is not a pretty city.  The shuttle bus from the airport was cheap and easy and took us straight to Mestre Santa Maria Railway Station where it was a not too long (if you go the right way) walk to our apartment. Paolo met us and was the perfect host, giving us the rundown on the apartment: a newly furnished and well equipped 3^rd floor spacious, airy and light filled apartment.  But we wanted to see Venice! So back to the Railway Station, were we grabbed the first train to Venezia Santa Lucia.

The Grand Canal was like Barcelona’s La Rambla.  Does every European City have one of those?   Just crowds of people all walking along.  I really love Venice.  I kind of had a picture in my mind of what it would be like, and wasn’t that fussed about even coming here.  And that was despite playing Tomb Raider, and exploring the city virtually.  But I don’t know, it wasn’t really anything like what I expected, but much, much more.  Such a lovely city to explore and walk around in with shops just everywhere.  So many little bars and cafés to sit and take a break in.  Also with the odd gypsy here and there, and heaps of big Nigerian dudes selling crap that I can’t imagine anybody would really want. We spent the afternoon just wandering around the streets and canals.

One of these things is not like the other...

I had Aperol and Campari spritzes out on the Zattere on a floating terrace, but we moved indoors for our dinner as storm clouds were looming.  Dinner was a really great, tasty and huge pizza, followed up with a damn good tiramisu as well.

A flaming orange sunset was the perfect end to our first day in Venice as we walked back along the canals and caught the train back to Mestre.

More pics here.