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The Travel Times

Salzburg-Venice

Monday, 4 Jan 2016 - 10:10AM

Travelled to Venice on the train a few days after Christmas. It’s all a bit more low key here; no boxing day sales, rushing about or inflatable Santas and everyone’s pretty much back to normal by Boxing Day. The biggest holiday day for workers is actually Christmas Eve. The absence of mania was pleasant but it left a bit of a hole for something to fit in. Probably if we lived here it’d be filled with all those home and family rituals that we cram in around all the tinsel and binge eating at home. 

Long but comfortable train journey back through the alps and down into the foggy flat bits of Italy to reach Venice after dark at 4pm. Robyn and I were here about God-knows-ago, a bit older than our kids are now, on our way to London to see the Queen. I love the way you walk out of the train station front and straight onto the quayside of the extremely boaty Grand Canal. We had bleary lamps in the fog, streaming people walking crisscross, the sound of vaperettos surging up to stops, gently bilious joggling of boats on ropes, poking poles, warm looking pizzeria windows. I just found it all very exciting! A short luggage trawl over cobbles not meant for swivelly wheels, around dog and people traffic to Hotel Principe and we were in bright lights and marble.

The girls find pulling their luggage deeply embarrassing. Their current feeling of intense dislike has gradually developed from the first trundle to check-in.  They have no ill feeling towards their suitcases at all, in fact Nicole won’t let anyone else touch hers, and they fully understand and accept the fundamental requirement of carrying their own stuff on tour.  The problems begin with the need for us to move en-masse from one location/ hotel/train station/ taxi to another which inevitably takes on the form of a camel train or conga-line. This phenomenon is conspicuous enough on its own but when you add the ingredient of cobblestones you get a soundtrack which sounds like train wheels on gravel in a loud thunderstorm at an airport, and our conspicuousness becomes an entity in itself and the girls just die.  We’ve discussed strategies to minimise conspicuosity; staggering leaving times, crossing the road, travelling in small groups side-by-side, but inevitably busy footpaths, pedestrian crossings, discussions on directions etc. lead to bunching and we’re back to a rumbling snake of mortification.

Rooftops unsatisfactory for Assasin's Running

 

 

A do-able jump across apparently

A foggy start

First location for warm-up coffee

Potential assisin targets

Far canal a gondola!

Grand Canal of an evening. Perfect time for assasins.

 

   
 
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