Airport in Venice

The airport in Venice compared to the airport in Paris France was clearly a much different experience. Flying in we could see the town of Venice and the water taxi’s and private boats buzzing down the waterway towards Venice. Once we landed it was not long before we found our luggage and prepared to leave.

Internet and cellular woes

Our very first struggle was dealing with internet and cellular connectivity. Alice has a much stronger need to stay connected with her business and clients. I was keenly focused on getting my next blog out which meant internet connectivity and maybe cellular services so I could transfer photos and content from my phone to my laptop.

Tmobile and Sprint you get 0 stars

Frankly this was a miserable experience for both of us. Alice called and communicated with TMobile/Sprint left me wondering how the call center technical support people could actually hold down a job. All we wanted was a breakdown of the expenses she would be charged by using her phone internationally in Venice as if she were still located in South Florida. Of course we also needed to know what we needed to do to make it happen. It took 45 minutes before I took over the phone call and dealt with the imbeciles at Tmobile/Sprint. After working in technology for nearly half my life and in call centers a good portion of that I understand most operators are just trained to READ a SCRIPT and really have no formal technical training. Very frustrating. Of course at the end of the call they want you to give them a 5 star rating so they can keep their job. TMobile, you are fired.

I had a similar experience myself with TMobile. We still are not confident what we are going to be charged for cellular phone calls, internet connectivity and or data or data roaming services. We hope to not see a big huge LUMING bill when we get home. Any help or advise from my colleagues would be much appreciated.

Boat ride to San Marco

The boat ride from the airport to San Marco - Venice was a lot of fun. We rode with about 8 other passengers, and the ride took about 30 minutes. I believe the cost for each of us was about $35.00 each. It was a lot of fun and gave us a glimpse of the amazing city and area of Venice which is really mostly waterways with man made levy and land.

Damaged luggage

After departing the water taxi, we lugged our luggage on route to locate our hotel. We had discovered that somewhere along the trip the airlines had broken or sliced one of the wheels on my TUMI luggage which made it difficult to roll around. Lets see if TUMI’s lifetime warrantee will cover this damage.

Where is our hotel room?

Just locating our hotel room was very comical. There seem to be really NO street signs or address, but just a bunch of very small alley ways. I was initially very distracted by the beauty and immensity of the glorious courtyard of San Marco square.

San Marco Square

Considered one of the finest squares in the world and certainly Venice's prime attraction, it is surrounded on three sides by the stately arcades of public buildings and on the fourth, by Basilica di San Marco's riot of domes and arches and the soaring St. Mark's campanile. You will see many photos and videos we took in and around this square as it was basically only a hundred yards away from our Hotel entrance

The Saint Mark’s Basilica

The Saint Mark’s Basilica, the most important church in Venice, and one of the most important and renown churches and landmarks in the world will celebrate its 400th anniversary since it was completed, the way we know it today, in 1617.

The Courtyard very close to our Hotel

The courtyard where it all comes alive and floods every evening during the winter months and high tide

Bands playing in the court yard. Amazing and romantic

Being without cellular connectivity google maps was worthless to us. Since we We asked one of the street vendors where our hotel was… He said, next left. We took a look down the “next left” and there was nothing that appeared to be anything like a hotel. We were lost and spent a good amount of time wheeling our luggage around to finally find our hotel which was down an alley way and certainly did NOT appear to be a hotel at all. The name of the hotel we stayed at in Venice was the Bellevue Suites. Now take a look at this door and you will understand why we couldn’t find it.

Our Hotel in Venice, down a narrow alley

Charging our devices dilemma

Now tell me again how we connect to this strange 3 pronged electrical outlet

Once we arrived at our hotel, our next challenge was to begin charging all our electronic devices that had been depleted along the way including phones, watches, laptops, camera batteries and others. We had previously purchased 2 converters on Amazon. Neither one of them seemed to work, or was it we just did NOT know how to use them? We were stuck, unable to charge our depleted phones and other electronic devices. The front desk was perplexed. He even gave us a converter which also seem to not work. Once we plugged it in, we still determined neither his device nor the devices we purchased from Amazon worked. After discussing this again with the front desk, all units seemed to magically work. We then began to charge our devices and joined the “free world” of Al Gores invited internet. Yea, we were in. A big sigh of relief. What were we gong to do with out charging phone, camera, laptops, etc. NO BLOG and no work. Yikes. What I finally discovered is that both the Amazon devices and the device provided by the hotel worked, but only worked on a subset of the outlets. The front desk was NOT aware of this problem. How many stars will I give them?

Our first afternoon in Venice

We spent the afternoon discovering this amazing place called Venice. Much of this time was spent in the courtyard just a block or so from our hotel.

Tell me a bit about Venice

Venice, known also as the “City of Canals,” “The Floating City,” and “Serenissima,” is arguably one of Italy's most picturesque cities. With its winding canals, striking architecture, and beautiful bridges Venice is unlike any other city I have ever been to.

Our first night in Italy and date night was spent exploring the city, having dinner and taking photographs.

Model radar is always ON

In the early evening I noticed a modelesque woman outside a store. I told Alice, I would love to photograph her. My WING MAN took over and went and asked her if I could photograph her. Sure enough she was a model and right in the middle of doing a shoot for Banana Republic. She gladly obliged and here are some of the photos I took of her.

The flooding of Saint Marco Square

On our way back home we veered back through the Saint Marco Square only to find out the entire square had basically been flooded. I guess this happens often this time of the year and during high tide. The flooding was about 1-2 inches of water and seemed to be seeping out of the “man hole covers” in the middle of the square. Alice refused to trudge through the water in her favorite new tennis shoes OC, white and comfortable. She loves those shoes and has been bragging about them ever since we bought then in Delray Beach. “I must save the shoes says Alice”, as she refused to get her tennies wet. I smiled and knew she would walk an extra mile to keep her favorite new shoes white and dry. We finally found a long route around to keep her socks dry.

Day one in our 1 month vacation of a lifetime is complete. Just another Tom and Alice day, with no sleep for over 24 hours for me and just less than that for Alice. We are still running on adrenaline. Maybe soon we will crash!

Venice Day 1