Arrival
ITALY JOURNAL
Arsenale stop on Colonna,
Garibaldi street
Venice..
10.15 pm
TICKETS TO RIDE
When we had landed and figured out how to buy a ticket to travel to where we were staying in Venice, which was supervised by two very expressive ladies from the City who explained things, but it cost £45 or so for three days travel!! And about £10 to get a boat to Arsenale, the nearest stop to where we were staying.
WATER TAXI
We left the airport and made our way down miles it seemed of escalator until we came out into modern high wharf covered in where beautiful fast boats keep arriving and leaving, causing much splashing of water. I’ve never seen boats in Devon or Cornwall arrive or leave with so much splashing and heaving, however it was glorious fun and the sun was shining on this lovely fun, everyone was having a great time, getting into fast boats and dashing off. Very dashing.
It wasn’t like that when I visited thirty- five years ago. There were boats, much smaller ones and just a very humble wharf and that was it. It was sandy and marshy and just one small quay to tie boats up at and it may well have been wood. Now it is glorious and fun for the visitors. When the water taxi arrived, it did so with a great splash and rush and I was told, ‘Quickly, quickly!’ by the man at the boat as we got on the taxi.
FIRST VIEW OF VENICE
Then the trip was divine, in sunshine, on a main road or waterway marked by wooden posts and in the distance the skyline of Venice, immortalised by all those painters, arose from the land, like a heaven, everywhere beautiful buildings arose from the sea and hung there. It was like they were suspended in thin air.
NIGHT VIEW
Then that night we walked in the evening watching the water moving on sudden canals and boats rushing, but quietly, lit by green and red lights, the wash quietly moving everywhere.
APARTMENTS BY CANAL
People in apartments that over looked the canal were living their precious lives, small quiet alleyways that are streets and people’s houses overlooking everything. Then the life on the main street where there were so many people eating and talking and being together, entertaining one another. Fancy!
LAGOON AT NIGHT
At Arsenale, we could watch the big boats go by, lit up at night, perhaps car ferries, to who knows where? We couldn’t tell, we didn’t know where they were coming from or where they were going to, but that was the beauty of it, the push toget somewhere to reach something was utterly gone andjust this wash of the sea over a shallow lagoon, without the deep reaching to deep of the ocean.
We sat and looked at the lightning lighting up the sky over the lagoon. What luck to be here and see all this! I only got it because someone else chucked it over and cancelled. Ain’t life funny?
