Can't rightly say that spending more money on a fancy hotel room makes for a better sleep, but it was nice to wake up without being greeted by Tron's snoring. When you're on the bicycle tour, it's somewhat comforting to know that your roommate is still asleep and therefore the two of you probably haven't missed an alarm, but....
Dozed until nearly 7:30am and realized suddenly that I had to get moving for my date with a bell tower. Just missed the 8:08am ferry from Lido but caught the 8:20am boat, lined up at Campanile San Marco just after the 8:30am opening, E8 admission and an elevator ride to the top,
an entire series of panorama photos from the upper level, and then the 9am bells just above our heads began to chime.
Geez! What a cacophony! And the two bells kept gonging away for about a minute.
Back to the ferry landing and hopped a boat to the hotel on Lido, breakfast with Tron and Killian until they started taking away the leftover food at 10am.
Today's plan is a #14 line ferry to Punta Sabbioni which then continues on to Burano, an island of brightly painted homes and businesses, famous for its fabrics and lace. Nice walk around the place, very photogenic.
The connecting ferry does an extensive tour of the six ferry stops in and around Murano Island, before continuing on around the San Marco complex; sort of a farewell tour.
Speaking of "farewell tours", I then hopped on the #16 ferry to Fusani, a mainland terminal with a campground where I tented back in June 2011 when I passed this way on my solo self-supported bicycle tour of Italy. At that time Camping Fusani was run by 23 Australians (on work visas) and 2 Italians (the male manager and a female receptionist at the entrance). No more. The work visa program seems to have ended and every staff member I spoke with was Italian. However, not much else about the place has changed: the grocery store charges outrageous prices for food & grog, and the tree that I pitched my tent under back in June 2011 is still giving shade for tenters.
Okay, enough with the reminiscing, it's back to Lido for a shower, and time to get serious about a final laundry and then packing my stuff for the flight home tomorrow morning.
No comments:
Post a Comment