Arto's Blog

I, my mother and two brothers had been walking along the streets of Murano island for a couple of hours, looking at pretty glass objects. We had also recently finished a three course lunch and shopped some fruit and wine in a supermarket to bring back home. It was half past five and about the time to leave. My mother thought it would be still nice to see the San Marco square, probably the most famous spot in Venice. Oh, it was going to be a bit tight but we would still have time to do it.

We hopped on the 17:42 waterbus towards the main island of Venice and got off at Fondamente Nove. From there we started walking towards the square, of course faster than most other people were walking. We stopped at a local bakery to buy five pieces of chocolate cake and packed them in my backpack on the way. We also took pictures on the Rialto bridge, which presented the essential Venetian atmosphere in about one minute.

When reaching the San Marco square we heard the chime of the church bells, saw the facade of the famous Basilica and watched pigeons eating breadcrumbs on a girls head. Everything was naturally recorded in photos. While rushing towards the west end of the square we even enjoyed a few tunes of the orchestra playing on the stage.

Our hotel was located quite far in the south-western corner of Venice, so we had to speed up our steps a bit. Nevertheless we saw the Accademia bridge and took a photo of a nice flower arrangement in front of a window by the canalside. When approaching the hotel to pick up our luggage we started already to laugh at the whole last minute sightseeing tour, suggesting each other more targets "to do".

But it was not the time to laugh yet. While others used the hotel bathroom, I downloaded photos from the camera to the laptop (which was going to go back to Finland along with the camera, my mother and brothers on the evening flight) and further to a mobile hard disk so that there would be a picture to add to this blog entry. Then we picked up our bags and suitcases and started running towards Piazzale Roma, where a bus was to leave towards the airport at 19:35.

When we arrived at 19:34, the bus was not there. And it didn't arrive in the next three minutes either. Taxi would have been the easy choice, but a quick search revealed that a local non-direct bus was also heading towards the airport, leaving at 19:40. I helped my mother and brothers to take in the luggage and waved good bye just as the doors closed. As an additional bonus, their waterbus tickets were also valid for the bus.

That was the end of the first part of my summer 2008 Balkans tour. The second part started still the same evening by taking a train to Udine, a town in North-Eastern Italy not far from Slovenian border. But that belongs already to the next story.