Italian Cruise, Day 1: Arrival & Venice

Hahn Airport & Arrival in Venice:

We flew RyanAir, a European low cost carrier, from the smaller Frankfurt airport into the smaller Venice airport. Hahn looked kind of like a warehouse with airport stuff in it. I love smaller airports because everything goes so much faster. European security checks are pretty much like ours, and I got felt up because I mysteriously beeped on my way through the sensors. The day we left Germany was a couple of days after Italy's soccer team had beat theirs in the European semi-finals, and there was a group of Italian guys in the airport that must have gone up to Poland via Frankfurt for the game. I hate to use the term 'Guido' here... but these guys had it all going on-- the hair, the swagger, the loudness. I did not see any fist pumping. They did sing in the bathroom and give each other a lot of hugs and kisses. Thankfully, they were not on our plane. Seating on the planes is open, like Southwest, so there was this mad rush and a ton of line-cutting when seating opened. We actually saw a lady holding a baby try to leap over a row of chairs. The mayhem was really surprising, because Germans are usually pretty orderly and not generally crazy chair-jumping budgers. All I can figure is that it was inspired by the Italians, who don't care much about things like lines.

Anyway, RyanAir. When I say "discount" carrier, I mean it's possible to get a ticket for very cheap. If I look it up right now, I can book a flight from Frankfurt to Venice for the weekend of August 20th for 46€. Ours did cost more than that, plus the cost of baggage is the same as regular airlines, but we still flew three people to Venice for the cost of what I would expect one American ticket to be. RyanAir does have this weird sales thing going on-- as soon as the flight begins, the attendants are parading up and down the aisles selling cigarettes, perfume, newspapers, bus passes, and booze. Upon arrival in Venice, they had the fastest baggage service I've ever seen. I think ours showed up within about five minutes.

I had made a crucial mistake when booking our hotel, in that I saw the words "close to the airport" and "free shuttle service" and booked the room. It was close to the airport... just not our airport. It was five minutes from Marco Polo, the big airport, which was at least 30 minutes away from Treviso. That was a painfully expensive cab ride!

More kudos for Hotels.com, because we paid around 65€ for an extremely recently remodeled room in an  absolutely gorgeous hotel with a delicious free breakfast. (Close to the airport! Free shuttle service!)

Venice:

The hotel shuttle took us to the Piazzale Roma, which is the last drop-off point in Venice before it all becomes foot traffic. The pier where our cruise ship was docked was also right near there, so we stored our luggage with a service and started walking toward St. Mark's Square. It was still early-ish on a Sunday morning, so as we started it was very quiet.

Venice is magic.

Every single building is interesting in some way. I could have taken a million pictures of the buildings in Venice. They are old and a little run down, but that is part of the intrigue and charm. The pictures I took don't do them justice. Walking down narrow streets, finding hidden shops in five-foot-wide alleys, and seeing buildings that look the same way they looked 500 years ago is amazing. The Venetians still open their wooden shutters in the morning and hang their laundry across the canals. We saw a group of older men at a corner cafe, laughing, arguing, and enjoying their Sunday morning wine.

Trying to be discreet always gets
me crappy pictures. I just need
to snap and run. Or ask permission.

We would walk through the maze of narrow alleys and streets and suddenly find ourselves in a small square, often with a church decorated by Renaissance-era statues. I'm always fascinated by doors, for some reason, and the doors in Venice were no exception. Huge, heavy, and old doors led up into apartments and homes but also into hidden courtyards, and no two doors were alike. I think if all I had done was wander the side streets of Venice I would have left happy.

Say what you will about the
dorkitude of this hat, it was
like a head tent and felt great.

We did finally make it to San Marco, and it was much more crowded there. The tall buildings had kept us in the shade up until then, but the Plaza is wide open, the sun was out, and it was hot. Thank goodness there were hundreds of hat vendors! Even though it was a Sunday morning, 11:30am is late in tourist time and the lines for the Basilica and Doge's Palace were already really long. Tom had already been inside on a previous trip and I'm not much for lines, so we just walked around the square and explored a few more side streets. We sat at the Caffe Florian, a very fancy cafe right on the courtyard for which we paid 6€ each merely to sit and listen to the live music. (Italian restaurants charge a coperto, or cover, just for sitting down-- usually it's a much more reasonable 1-2€.) We then enjoyed our expensive music, fabulous view, and one tiny, 8€ bottle of water.

We taught Wyatt to chase the pigeons, which he LOVED
 and now does at every opportunity. 

We continued walking, crossing the Rialto Bridge and seeing some of the more touristy areas, before ducking into a quiet courtyard with a little closed-up church and a cafe where we had lunch-- pizza and a caprese salad, both delicious.

The Ship:

Our goal was to get to the pier by about 2pm, so we eventually made it back to the Piazzale and onto the tram that carried us over to the pier and our ship, the Costa Favolosa. Boarding the ship took a while, though we somehow not only got sent to the priority boarding line, but were upgraded to a balcony room when we checked in. Score!! The ship was beautiful, and had kind of a neon Art-Deco vibe to it. Our room was also very nice, with the added luxury of the balcony. The staff were all very nice, and I was amazed throughout the week by their ability to switch between Italian, English, and French to help everyone. Costa is an Italian cruise line, and the majority of the passengers were Italian. After months of hearing German, Italian sounded like music. I absolutely loved hearing it all week.

I did not take this, but this is what our room looked like.

Picture taken on a certain previous Costa cruise,
confirming my suspicions.

Before the boat left, we all had to participate in a safety drill, which involved 2500 people wearing lifejackets heading down the stairs to stand in lines near lifeboats. I seriously doubt that in the event of an emergency, these people would have been standing in orderly 6-person lines waiting for further instruction. Just sayin'. An interesting thing Italians do is clap for everything. Tom and I first noticed this watching "Cake Boss", and it holds true in real life. When the plane landed in Venice, the Italians clapped. When the safety drill ended, the Italians clapped. I love their enthusiasm.

After the safety drill, it was time to head to dinner in the dining room. It's a fun, fancy ordeal, and everyone dresses nicely to enjoy their six-course meal. We didn't get the hang of it the first night-- you choose from several selections from each course right away, and then over the course of about 90 minutes you eat your dinner. Six courses sounds like a lot, but the servings are tiny. You can order absolutely whatever you want off the menu, though-- two entrees, no salad, cheese platter, and three desserts? No problem. Three appetizers, soup, cheese platter, and one dessert? No problem. So the first night we left sort of hungry, but every night after that we ate like rock stars. That first night, there was fillet of shark on the menu. I thought that was kind of wrong, with which Tom (eating his fillet of shark) didn't agree. It led to a discussion about the wrongness of eating certain animals. Also a debate about whether dolphins are secretly smarter than humans but sadly lacking opposable thumbs.

Gratuitous interior picture of ship.

Wyatt fell asleep at dinner, and after all the day's walking we were exhausted too. The ship did have tons of entertainment on board-- shows, casinos, bars, and a 4D movie theater. We were usually exhausted by 9pm, when the nightlife starts, and lounge acts (which is what most of it resembled to me) are terrible things anyway. I didn't see any of it aside from a few minutes peeking in on an ice-skating-on-something-that-wasn't-ice show. Intriguing, but on a 20x20 stage I can really only watch twirling around in circles and hugging so many times before two minutes is up and I'm bored. Also, the port calls were usually early in the morning. So in the evenings, it was off to bed we went.

And that's Day 1! Stay tuned for Day 2...

Venice pics:
https://picasaweb.google.com/109948724159677921314/Venice1Edit?authuser=0&feat=directlink