Free Travel #2 (Part 2)

My family spent Friday, October 17, in Venice. Rather than attempting to drive from Padua, we planned on riding a commuter train that takes about 35 minutes to reach the island part of Venice. Thursday afternoon we learned that a train strike had been planned for Friday from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., so we made sure we made it to the train station around 8:00 in order to get on a train that would reach Venice before the strike was scheduled to begin. Our plan worked without any hitches, and at 9:00 we were in the Venice train station. However, we learned when we got out to the Grand Canal that the strike included the vaporetto boats that function as buses, and service was irregular, with no boats going all the way to St. Mark's square.

So we decided to walk to St. Mark's. This turned out to be a mistake, because the kids (especially William) had their hearts set on riding a boat, so whenever we crossed a canal between the train station and St. Mark's, William almost threw a fit. We took our time getting to the piazza, not arriving until after 11:00. We waited in line to go into the church, and once we were inside we paid to go upstairs into the gallery and museum. The morning had been cloudy, but the sun came out while we were inside and lit up the mosaics brilliantly. After leaving the church we fed pigeons in the piazza and got some funny pictures. The kids thought that was the best thing ever.

Then we went into the Doge's Palace and spent more than an hour there. The kids weren't too impressed by most of the rooms, but they really enjoyed the armory, which was about what I had expected. We snacked in the café and then went back to the Rialto Bridge, which we had passed on the way to St. Mark's. There we waited in line for a vaporetto heading back for the train station so that the kids would get their boat experience. Fortunately, they enjoyed the ride immensely, despite its relative brevity of about 5-10 minutes. We disembarked at about 4:00 p.m., an hour before the train strike was scheduled to end, and we spent most of our waiting time in a cafeteria called Brek that was recommended by Rick Steves. Our return trip to Padua was uneventful, and we made it back to the hostel around 6:15, early enough so that we felt justified in going out to dinner at another pizzeria. We got back to the hostel around 8:30 and turned in to prepare for another day of travel on Saturday.