When we got off the train in Venice's Santa Lucia station, the train itself an attractive conveyance with modern bathrooms, wide seats, and free snacks in business class, and fast, at one point the speedo showed 298 kph, well, as I started saying, as soon as we got off the train I had the feeling that we'd made a mistake.
I knew the feeling well, it was the same feeling that came over me when we got off the bus in Atacama after a day-long ride over the Andes from Purmamarca. My first impression of the Chilean town lead me to write something like Atacama appears to be a place where other places send their garbage. In today's case, Venice seemed a mash up of Disneyland, a Caribbean cruise, and Las Vegas. So even off-season Venice is mobbed, and with people I don't want to be around. And this being southern Europe it's overlaid with second-hand smoke. Makes you want to come, eh?
Funny thing though, after a short while Atacama moved up in my estimation, it improved so much it became a South American high point, so I've learned not to hold onto first impressions as often times they are attenuated by experience.
And sure enough, by the time we jumped off vaporetto No.2 at Giudecca Palanca I began to see a glimmer of hope that my attitude could adjust. I saw a bit of Bangkok in the way the packed water busses race around each other and then oh-so-briefly tie up to the dock, kind of like a bee exchanging pollen with a flower, only this time it's clots of humans disembarking and embarking.
What is key to enjoying Venice, we found, is to avoid the path of the day trippers, the route that connects the transit hub to Plaza San Marco.
