The Air France coach is supposed to go every half hour and there is one sitting there when we arrive, but for some reason the driver says he'll be going in 35 minutes. Much discussion follows and finally he announces that we'll be going in 15 minutes.
Everything is going fine until we approach CDG airport. Traffic is getting heavier, the driver is switching lanes trying to pick the one that moves fastest. The closer we get to the airport, the slower we go. When we finally arrive at Terminal 2, things are completely jammed up. Despite the driver's honking and lane-changing, we slow to a crawl. I've never seen it like this at the airport, ever. And check-in for our flight will be closing soon. Minutes go by like hours. I'm thinking about what we will do when we miss our flight. Could we get a later flight? If we did, where would we stay tonight? We have to be at the charter base before 18:00 for the handover. No boat, no bed.
Finally we arrive at Terminal 2F. We get off the coach and run for the shuttle bus to Terminal 2G. Luckily there is a bus just about to leave. We hop on, and after the short ride to 2G we rush in to find a ticket machine and print off our boarding passes. Then we queue to check in our bags. Air France staff are there looking for passengers to Cologne. Bologne? "No, Cologne". But check-in for Bologne closes in 2 minutes! "No problem, don't worry". Then a few minutes later: "Any passengers for Bologne?". Yes! "Please follow me". We rush through with a group of others who were probably also stuck in the traffic jam.
We arrive at the departure gate out of breath. Board plane and find our seats. Hurry to sit down and get strapped in. Five minutes later and they still haven't closed the doors. Crew mulling about. Pilot gets off plane and goes into the terminal. Comes back and announces that we are delayed due to late passengers and a computer problem. We wait. And wait some more. Finally the missing passengers arrive. We take off, and make up most of the lost time during the flight.
We land in Bologna, collect our luggage, and get the BLQ coach to Bologna Centrale train station. The coach passes through the centre of Bologna, and as usual the colonnades are covered with graffiti. Not one that doesn't have some graffiti on it. Interesting? Not. Artistic? Not. It's been like this for at least twenty years now, every time I've gone through Bologna. Please, do something about this. In Paris they have a number that you can call and they will come and remove the graffiti. Of course the real answer is to arrest the people who do this, or their parents. I hate graffiti. Especially on historic buildings.
We get a panini and bottled water at the train station. The water bottles have these squeeze/squirt valve things on the end where you spray water into your mouth. I must be getting old. We buy tickets on the Frecciargento to Padova from a machine. The ticket booths are gone, ticket agents unemployed or retired? We make the mistake of specifying which seats we want, and so we get the desired seats but they are not together. The machine doesn't have an option of "together" even though we are buying three tickets, two adults and one child.
The train takes about an hour to get to Padova. As we leave the station, we hear piano music, and see this guy playing a grand piano plopped in the middle of the square outside the station. We stop to listen for a minute, but then he finishes and we have a bus to catch. We aren't exactly sure where to get the bus from, and there are many buses in front of the station so I go to the booth and ask. The man tells me that the bus for Chioggia is behind, over there. We wander off behind (to the left of the station as you exit) and don't see any buses for Chioggia. Finally we realize that it is _way_ behind and _way_ over there. There is a little booth where we buy our tickets, and the bus comes a few minutes later. It takes about an hour to get to Chioggia, and we're not really sure where to get off to go to Isola dell'Unione where the boats are. I ask the bus driver and he says we can either get off in Chioggia or the last stop in Sottomarina. We get off in Sottomarina and find the bridge across to Isola dell'Unione. I had printed off some aerial photos from Google Maps prior to departure, and they turn out to be very useful.
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| Rendezvous Fantasia base, Chioggia |
As soon as we step onto the pontoon, we are greeted by a friendly young lady who takes us to our boat. She asks if we prefer to speak English or French and we leave the choice up to her. "Grado" is a Pénichette 1020 FB, a 33 foot fly bridge canal boat. Administrative details are quickly dealt with, then she shows us the boat and spends a lot of time discussing possible itineraries. She tells us about navigation marks in the lagoon. There are "Meda" - single piles that mark the edges of smaller channels. "Briccola" - three piles tied together at the top, they mark the edges of larger channels. "Dama" - three angled piles together with a fourth higher central one, they mark the entrance to a channel. Each briccola is numbered, and the black-on-white number faces into the channel. If you can't see the number, you're on the wrong side!
She also highlights some "go" and "no go" areas on our chart with green and red felt pens. Unfortunately she marks the Grand Canal in Venice in red. I start wondering about how much the fine might be for going up there... Murano also gets a big red X through it. She tells us that our planned itinerary should be quite easy to achieve, and just in case we have an extra day we could do a bit of the Sile river up towards Treviso. And here's me thinking I've already planned too much. But I can imagine that some people like to cover a lot of ground. We on the other hand don't want to be spending too much time on the boat when there is so much to see ashore! After this a young gentleman comes to explain the technical aspects of the boat. I'm sorry I didn't get their names, they were both very friendly and efficient.
These boats can be hired without any kind of boating licence or qualification, but it's clearly an advantage to have a bit of experience. Expecially since the lagoon has a tidal range of about one meter and strong currents. Not to mention the boat traffic. The young man takes us out for a quick spin and we return to the pontoon to tie up for the night. Tomorrow we'll be off on our own! We rush into town to get some food supplies before the shops close. I pick up a jar of marmelatta di limone that looks interesting, even though I'm not a big marmalade fan. Eileen finds a jar of pheasant pasta sauce. Back to the boat, then off to dinner. We had asked for restaurant recommendations and the young lady suggested a place called El Fontego. At last we can start to relax and enjoy our holiday!
We find the restaurant and after waiting a bit they prepare a table for us outside. It's obviously a popular place. We order pizzas and wine. There is a group of Italians with a large dog at the table to our left, and a group of French with a small poodle across from us. There are dog-introductions, sniffing, etc., then separation back to their respective tables. The large dog then barks whenever he sees another dog passing (which is quite often). And he has the loudest, meanest sounding, scariest bark I've ever heard. I nearly jump out of my seat every time. Laura thought he was cute and wanted to pet him. It's true that he wasn't mean or ugly looking. Maybe his bark was worse than his bite?
There are a few mosquitoes around so we try to cover as much skin as possible, Laura pulling her socks over her pant legs. The pizza is very good, we finish with gelato, then back to the boat and fall into bed. We didn't notice any road noise, and a good sleep was had by all.
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