We managed to walk for about an hour from the train station to our hotel near San Marco piazza without too much of a problem because we carried day packs only. If you have been to Venice, you would likely agree with me that it was not easy to find ways. I had to rely on my compass and the city map from the tourist office at the train station where only main streets had names. Whenever I was not certain, I asked old lady for direction. If the alley way in my birthplace Jakarta is small, some of the streets for pedestrian in Venice are even smaller. That city was built by joining 117 little islands and only through walking would you be able to experience its uniqueness.
After walking for quite some time and hearing complaints from my partner :-) because I walked too fast, we were happy to find our hotel, Noemi. We secured a room there with the help of Father Kusmaryanto after he called the camping place we intended to stay. It was far from Venice, about 1.5 hour by boat and then taxi. The last word scared us :-). So Father Kus called a couple or so hotel and found that Noemi only charged 73 Euro. We were speechless and couldn't argue with the guy at the reception desk when he told us the rate was 87 Euro. He shook his head when we mentioned that our friend reserved the room with the lower rate. Not to spoil our trip nor tarnished the image of Canadian :-) we asked if we could stay for 2 nights since we only reserved it for 1 night. No vacancy. When we started to go out and found a 3-star hotel next door, Best Western, we came in. "Do you have a vacant double room for tomorrow night?," I asked the guy. "Yes." "How much is the rate?" "Two hundred fifty Euros." I felt much better after saying thank you very much, staying at Hotel Noemi :-).
We strolled along San Marco piazza and did some window shopping, admiring the beautiful work of art in Venetian glasses. The romanticness of Venice started in that piazza where we could listen to couple bands playing romantic music. It was so powerful that we could see two guys kissing and caressing one another when we took our 'boat tour' in what is called vaporetto, public boat. That was how we did our main sightseeing, using the boat to check the island city of Venice. As happened in Milan, the mayor of Venice must know that we were celebrating our anniversary. In the evening, we had another free choral performances in 'Festa di Primavera 2002', that was held not too far from San Marco. It was the grand final of a singing competition of the best Italian singers in Venice and nearby.
Let's skip the rest of the night story after we returned from the show and the planet Jupiter in the Gemini constellation above us told your Gemini boy to not forget that Venice means romance :-). Let's fast forward to the morning of May 13 in Venice. After a do-it-yourself breakfast in the hotel, we were on our way to catch the vaporetto to Murano island. It is the island where the famous Venetian glasses are manufactured or rather are designed and created. A nice looking gentleman approached us and introduced himself as a representative from Murano tourist office. What a coincidence, I said to myself, this guy knew where we were heading. He told us that only twice a week, the Murano promotion office offered free personal trip to visitor interested in seeing how Venetian glasses are made. We jumped at the opportunity and he escorted us to a motorboat (that could accomodate 10 passengers or so). We hopped into the motorboat and off we went to Murano island. As the boat was quite small compared to a vaporetto (that could accomodate 100 passengers) he took a short-cut going inside the city or the small canals because Murano island was on the other side. Again, I wished I could paddle a canoe through those canals :-). Only after the boat docked in one of the Venetian glass companies entrance did we realize we had been had :-). To cut the story short, it was not too bad though. We had a private demo on how one made the various glasses. We checked the store wares and just exclaimed 'beautiful' from time to time to appreciate our host generosity :-). Yes, the cheapest item was in the hundred of Euros, the beauties would wipe our budget :-). We were glad when the company guy showed us the door to the street. Didn't I tell you earlier, Italian are friendly people?
After visiting that pricey company store, prices of a few items at ordinary stores in the island looked so cheap that my wife went for a shopping spree thereafter. Perhaps that guy at San Marco piazza was genuinely from Murano tourist office :-). Since we were not able to stay for another night in Venice, we got ourselves ready in the afternoon for the night train to Vienna. We intentionally didn't reserve a sleeping couchette in the train and took a calculated risk. We will share with you what happened on that night train in the next episode. Take care, bye for now.