After an early wake up and breakfast, we checked out and disembarked just after 8:30. It was a smooth process and one which allowed us to get away from the port extremely quickly. Other than the people mover train, we didn't require public transport, so getting to the train station itself was successful. Then we found out that it was likely that our train to Munich was going to be scheduled as planned in the afternoon.
Given that positive info, we stored our bags at the station and headed for the centre of Venice. The first sign of the strike for us was that the public water buses weren't running, so we needed to walk to St. Mark's Square. This was actually pretty perfect for us anyway, because we wanted to do some more exploring of Venice. The slightly annoying problem was our box for the post office. We had to take it the whole way to St. Mark's and it was bloody hot out there.
Our box was full of the cocktail glasses from the cruise (only four made of glass), as well as some of our winter clothes and some odds and ends. 95€ seemed a bit steep given the cargo! We took the tight-arse option and continued on our journey...box in arms. It even got a designated chair at lunch!
Today Sussan (sister / sister-in-law-to-be) was also in Venice. Unfortunately she was with her Top Deck group doing a walking tour and so we weren't able to catch up with her. That didn't stop us from stalking virtually every youngish tour group coming and going in St. Mark's Square! We suspected that we would have been close at one stage, but we weren't lucky enough to cross paths.
After our overly priced espresso in the square, we headed with our box back towards the Rialto Bridge for a nice relaxing lunch. We ended up back at a place we ate last time, so we could have the spaghetti with clams. Soooo amazing!
We underestimated our return time to the station, as we ended up stopping to buy a bottle of Limoncello and a bottle of Aperol to take home. Does anyone out there know if we would have to claim this at customs on our way back into Australia? We're only unsure because we already paid tax in Italy. After the purchase and some pics, it was another Amazing Race like run to the station. Crap and we still had to go back to the bag collection! We were sweating like demons when we finally took our seats.
The air conditioning in our coach seemed really sporadic, but more off than on! They didn't even have it going in our carriage until about four hours in, just near the Austrian border. No wonder we couldn't cool down after our earlier stress, to a point where it made us incredibly sleepy. This was pretty much how we felt in Athens cruising on the red bus in the heat and falling asleep.
Rich: Unfortunately you couldn't sleep if you wanted to. Two American ladies managed to talk for over 4 hours straight. This was about half of the train ride by this stage. We all know their life stories now, thanks for the commentary! We had a stop in a town near the Italian / Austrian border for 15 minutes and it was nice to have two things, air conditioning and a bit of piece and quiet. I said to Tan at one stage that the ladies' mouths must be powered by the movement of the train!
An easy train ride from Venice to Munich, then a very short walk from the train station to our well place hotel. It would've been a much shorter walk had we spotted it earlier, as we had to double back to it.
Checked in, then it was time to get refreshed with a shower before heading off to a late dinner. We'd seen a lot of the bars and cafés along the street with people watching the UEFA match between Germany and Greece, so we decided to join in on the action whilst having our dinner.
After filling our bellies with a slice of pizza and a German beer each and witnessing Germany's domination over Greece we headed back to our hotel to catch up on some sleep.
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