Tues 14/2/2017.
Our Venice trip was about to begin. There must be a circle of Hell reserved for packing and your suitcase constantly being a kilo overweight. Maybe we should keep a list of how many cartons of soya milk and how many cans of Red Bull we can pack. Once we’d added our customary shortbread, our suitcase gained weight faster than politicians’ pockets at voting time. Fortunately, sacrificing one carton of soya milk and an ice block helped with the weight issues. Who knew shortbread would cause so much weight gain? It was Paris all over again. We hoped this holiday wouldn’t end with Lynx’s phone drowning. Venice has a lot of canals. Out of the two holidays we’ve done, Lynx has left two phones behind.
Highway to Hell
We got up at the ungodly hour of 2:30 a.m. to leave at 3:30 a.m. Four of us and our luggage in our mum’s Mini Cooper convertible was certainly a challenge, but far more comfortable than our SmartForTwo. Roadworks closed Junction 25-26 of the M4 so signs diverted us back on to the M4 in the opposite direction. The diversion signs directed us off at J27, and we followed the signs back to J26. Maybe this was another circle of Hell we were trapped in.
This time, when we got off at the slip road, we used our classic trick of following the car in front and hoping it knew where it was going. It worked yet again. We got to Broadfield Farm in Bristol with no issues at around 5 a.m. A spaniel alerted the farmer to our arrival, and he appeared wearing his galoshes. We just had to wait for him to finish milking his cows before he gave us a lift to the airport in his rattly minibus. We use him every time we fly from Bristol Airport, despite the council consistently trying to shut him down.
Security Risk
Our suitcase was exactly the weight our scales said it was, so the embarrassing check-in scene was avoided. Probably just as well, because we were flying with two different friends, Tom and Amy, and whilst us and Neen (who we’ve known since we were 5) find such situations funny, others don’t react as well to public embarrassment.
When we travel together, the three of us meet up, have chips and spend an evening with one of us looking for flights, one looking for accommodation and one looking for activities or sightseeing opportunities, making holiday planning a fun evening activity. Without Neen, it’s just us two doing everything, making holiday planning a stressful chore. We had to go through the scanner and suffer a vigorous pat down from security. We assured the guard that the metal showing up was the underwire in our bras, but she insisted on having a good feel just to make sure. She even checked Cat’s hair. Not sure what we could hide in there, considering our hair is short.
Irresponsible Adults
Lynx felt horrendously sick for the entire plane ride and just about refrained from vomiting into the doggy bag in her pocket. We managed to book tickets and find our way to the Alilaguna ferry blue line with no problems. Neen usually sorts out the public transport for us, but now we had to do it alone. Are we…becoming responsible? Will we finally battle our travel anxiety by proving to ourselves that we are competent? You know what pride comes before. And our fall was about to be more epic than Lucifer’s. But we didn’t get a fiery realm to rule over.
Water Ferry
The ferry ride was lovely. It stopped at Murano – famous for its beautiful glassmaking. It was our first visit to Venice. We had to do it in style. There was a boy on the ferry we could have cheerfully thrown over the side to swim with the fishes. He was singing a song about Maths. Why don’t children come with off buttons? Come on evolution, this would be vital to the survival of our species. Every year, we pray for child free public transport. Every year we’re disappointed. Maybe we need to bring back sacrificing. Or pack duct tape.
Someone was supposed to meet us at Fondamente Nove “A” so they could show us to our AirBnb apartment. There was no one there. We waited. And waited. The person didn’t come. We decided to find our apartment using Tom’s SatNav as our phones refused to access the internet. We ended up walking for over two hours, lugging our 20kg suitcase up and down hundreds of steps.
Lost in Translation
We ended up in some sort of school, judging by all the screaming children in the courtyard. That noise was really not helping our stress levels. Noise, especially high-pitched noise like screaming, is one of our biggest autistic triggers. Being stressed, lost and experiencing a sudden change of plan, such as a person not showing up to meet us, makes it much harder to control an imminent meltdown. We hate having to rely on other people, because they always let us down. Always. We thought we’d got the right apartment, but a neighbour informed us we were in completely the wrong part of Venice and seemed more concerned with getting us out as quickly as possible.
We returned to Rialto Bridge and asked for help in a handbag shop. A lovely guy not only got out a map to try to find our apartment in the Cannaregio area but also found a street address book and tried to phone our host for us. When we told him we were from Wales, he asked, “Swansea or Cardiff?” Like we couldn’t love him more at this moment. His mum helped him, but as she couldn’t speak English, he translated for her. You, Signore, are our hero.
Settee of Despair
We found the right apartment and waited for an hour. Still no sign of our host. Luckily, in the foyer, there was a tattered old settee, so at least we had somewhere comfortable to sit. We named it The Settee of Despair. We returned to the ferry port. Turns out, we were about 5 minutes from our apartment, not the two hour walking tour SatNav took us on. We were about as happy as someone being asked to sit on the Inquisitor’s chair.
We rang our mum and she found us the number for AirBnb Italy as our internet still wasn’t working. A lovely guy called Luca got in touch with our host and she rang us back. She’s currently in Brazil. It was her friend who was supposed to meet us at the port. She arranged for someone else to meet us. Meanwhile, Tom and Amy managed to salvage some of the day by finding a chip shop, Chips Amsterdam, that did vegan chips.
Luca rang back to see if we were ok, and told us to get some food and drink, photograph the receipt and email it to him. He’d reimburse us up to €50. He was so nice and phoned us several times to see if we were ok, and if we’d got into the apartment. That’s customer service for you. They weren’t that helpful in Pompeii, but that’s a story for a different time.
Hand Jobs
A couple entered the apartment building, saw Cat, and stopped dead. The woman looked genuinely terrified and refused to walk past her for a minute. Was it the cloud of rage emanating from her like a mushroom cloud? Or the turquoise hair?
Our host arranged for someone to meet us outside McDonald’s at 6 p.m. In 50 minutes’ time. Luckily, there was only one McDonald’s nearby, so while Tom guarded our bags, we headed out with Amy to meet the new person. We wandered into Lush, where a smiley man greeted us and insisted on rubbing pink heart soap on our hands and giving us a hand massage. It was a Valentine’s Day offer. Rub away, Signore! Another man tried to persuade a couple to accept the soap and massage, but they refused, so Lynx volunteered again. We were guided to a sink and told to crumble some powder into our hands and wash it off with this soft foam. A lady then gave us the same soap and hand massage treatment. So while Tom sat alone with our bags, we were being pampered. We’re not sorry, we deserved it.
Greetings
The new greeter arrived on time and took us to the apartment. Luckily, we were in the right place. She walked at a blistering pace and didn’t slow as she climbed the many, many stairs to our 4th floor apartment. By the time we were halfway, our thighs were burning like Hell’s fiery lakes and our suitcase seemed as heavy as Sisyphus’s boulder. There were no lifts in the building. We were tempted to tell her to go ahead and leave us to die on the stairs.
But we finally made it to our apartment and it was beautiful. We unpacked, did our 130 squats (we were doing a 30 day squat challenge), marked the haunted places off on our map then decided to head out and explore while we waited for another friend, Lesley, to join us. She lives in England so flew out separately. Our birthdays are a week apart, so this was a joint celebration.
Venice is so much nicer when you’re not dragging half your body weight in luggage up and down countless steps and glaring like gorgons. We made our way to San Marco, but somehow managed to miss St Mark’s Square. We blame it on being dark. And on us not looking left. Venice is lovely to walk around at night. There’s not much nightlife, so there are no drunken louts and the streets aren’t crowded. It feels safe to even walk down the narrow alleys.
Happy Ending
Lesley arrived at 10:45 p.m. so we went to meet her, took her back to the apartment so she could drop her bag off then went to find the nearest pub. We wandered across half of Venice until we found a tiny bar and had lovely vodka and lemonades. The tables were giant barrels, and it was our favourite bar. We got back at gone midnight.
There’s one thing we’ve noticed about Venice – there are a lot of lovely-looking men around. The level of attractiveness is much higher than we’re used to. We might need to make Italy a regular holiday destination. (Gentle reader – we did.) After we’d got into our apartment, we contacted Luca to say everything was alright. He told us the host was refunding our first night there as an apology for us being left stranded. Maybe this trip won’t be such a disaster after all.
Read Day 2.