Buonguorno from Venice!

We finally bid good-bye to London today and took a RyanAir flight from London -  Stansted airport to Venice Treviso airport. Despite being an early morning flight, the airport was fully crowded. Across the world, looks like people prefer low-cost airlines. Talking of which, RyanAir is doing a great job at flying people low cost. But I would suggest you to go through this link before you fly RyanAir - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryanair#Customer_service  As for us, it was a comfortable flight and having woken up at 0300 to catch the flight, we spent the entire duration sleeping that when we finally woke up, we were already landing.  
 

The Treviso airport can be compared to one of our small airports, for example, Pune – no frills, land and get out. So once we got out, we took the comfortable airport transfer bus to Venezia Mestre railway station. The airport staff at Stansted was handing out passes for this airport transfer. One ticket costs £10, which was pretty decent considering the distance.
 

The lanes of Venice

 After looking like a lost child in a carnival for a while at the Mestre station and enquiring at the ticket office, we finally took a bus to Via Bergamo, where our hotel is. You have to walk forward from the Mestre railway station to the bus stop. There are bus stops on either side of the road so you have to enquire which way to go and the bus numbers to your destination.

Luckily, the hotel was a short walk from our bus stop. Once we checked in, we quickly had a shower and left the hotel to explore the quaint little island city of Venice.

Italy’s transport system is pretty convenient – you can get into the bus and the driver issues tickets in exchange for cash. Alternatively, you can buy tickets even at the local Tobacco shops called Tabacchi in Italian. We got round tickets for the day to Piazza Roma. Day passes are also available for €20 which includes unlimited travel in all sorts of transport – bus, local trains and the vaporetto(the water taxis of Venice). Tickets have to be validated by showing your ticket in front of the circular box that’s available (much like checking into London trains using Oyster card). Buses have about three of these boxes inside and the Vaporetto and trains have them in the wharf and platforms respectively. 
 

We reached Piazza Roma, the town square, which has a bus depot not unlike our Perambur depot. Hungry as we were, we filled our stomachs in a fancy restaurant that served huge pizzas the size of an above-average sized dosa. 
 

Our next stop was to buy the all-important Lyca Mobile SIM card. For the uninitiated, Lyca Mobile is a boon for all travellers. At rates as low as 1 cent/min, it is the best bet to keep in touch with home and the world. In Venice, we could buy a SIM card from the local store – €10 recharge, for calls and 1 GB worth of 3G data valid for a month. We were given a leaflet and a SIM – the card got automatically activated in a few hours. I had to call the customer care for 3G activation instructions though. With a little bit of difficulty understanding Italian English over the phone (yourrrr seeem carrrdu activashon and all that), finally we were connected. Voila! It is a great feeling to have connectivity! We spoke to our families and after all the love exchange, we started the 30-min walk to Piazza San Marco, the bustling square filled with tourists and pigeons. Since we are now pros at walking, thanks to all the walking we had done in the last 10 days, a half an hour walk was going to be a cakewalk. The walk was very memorable. We had book a tour of the Venetian clock tower and we had less than an hour to get there. We followed Google Maps faithfully through narrow lanes, which sprouted from nowhere when all we were expecting were dead ends. It was a maze, but a beautiful charming maze with surprises in every corner and when we finally turned into a seemingly narrow lane we had reached the St. Mark’s Square (Piazza San Marco) and it was like a scene out of a fairytale. We both caught ourselves grinning from ear to ear taking in the sights! 

You can see I am happy!

Expenses:

·      Greenwich to London-Stansted - £0.00 (my brother dropped us)

·      RyanAir Flight Tickets from London-Stansted to Venice-Treviso Airport - £133.98 (including baggage allowance of £25 per person)

·      Airport Transfer from Treviso Airport to Mestre/Mainland - €10 each

The birds of Venice - does anybody know the name of the white bird?

·      Lunch - Pizza Margherita, one Vegetarian Calzone and a bottle of water - €34.50 (including a tip of €2) 

·      Bus from Mestre Railway station to Via Bergamo - €5.00 for two

·      Round trip tickets from Mestre’s Via Bergamo bus stop to Piazza Roma -  €5.20 for two

·      Lyca Mobile SIM card - €10 for the SIM card with talktime and 3G data