Monday was another brisk but sunny day. Temperatures got above 70 in the canyons on the Italian side but cooled to the mid-sixties along the coast. Cut across the Bavarian countryside south of Munich to avoid the morning rush hour through the city. First views of the Alps were magnificent.
Through Garmisch then over a notch to Innsbruck. There are ski lifts on almost everything slope just heading up into the alpine and ski runs cut into the forest running all the back down to the valley bottoms. And this seemingly goes on and on, valley after valley.
Once into Italy and on the down slope started peeling layers off is it warmed up some. Pulled into the hotel in on the outskirts of mainland Venice before 5PM and checked in. This was the first hotel that had been booked by Adriatic Motorcycle Tours as will the rest of the hotels to Istanbul. At the desk where a couple of obvious motorcycle riders just as obviously as me from North America. Turns out they were here for a guided tour with Adriatic Motorcycle Tours across Italy to Corsica and Sardinia. A tour by the way that is definitely on my short list. Met with some of that group at dinner where life stories were traded along with tales of adventure past, present and future.
I took public transportation from the hotel into Venice proper first thing in the morning - stuffed into the bus with all the commuters. Hopped onto a waterbus right at the let off point and jumped off at the Rialto bridge.
Wandered through the market and then meandered to the Piazza San Marco where I had a very expensive coffee and croissant while listening to several different versions of "Volare" from 3 or 4 quartets performing simultaneously at the various verandas in the square.
The selfie stick is the scourge of the Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat... traveling generation and there are swarms of peddlers selling these stupid things. Whatever happened to the time honored tradition of handing your camera over to a complete stranger (usually yours truly) and asking them to take your picture? Managed to stay continuously and gloriously lost for 4 or 5 hours as I eventually found my way back the transit hub.
Apparently Tuesday is the day Venice is closed so didn't see the Peggy Guggenheim modern art collection and I am not going to dinner where I originally had planned. First world problems, I'll manage. While I wasn't specifically looking for signs of Marco Polo I did serendipitously find this place.
No comments:
Post a Comment