2nd Time Around: Day 20 – The Great Comeback

Today was a better logistics day. We did what we knew, and trusted our experience and not the maps or Venetian city workers.

We have found Austrians to be much more helpful than Italians, in general.

Today, we got up and out of camp by 8:45, on the bus to Punti. We got there in time to hop on the 9:00 Vaporetti to Venice. Still took us till 10am to hit Venice, but we were there in time to get a few sites in.

We had tickets to an “insider’s tour” of the Doges Palace at 11:30am. We spent the time between 10 and our tour just looking around and wandering San Marco Square and the surrounding streets. Here are some pictures of that:

Jack and I also got the privilege of paying 1.50 Euro each for the public Toilet in Venice…fun, huh? About the size of, and less clean than, a Wendy’s bathroom.

We were not allowed to take pictures in the palace, but Casanova was a prisoner there in the 1750’s. Pretty cool tour and story. The Doges was like the president of the Venetian Republic.

After the tour, we wandered up to the Rialto bridge over the Grand Canal, and grabbed a quick slice of Pizza each at a local eatery. We then grabbed our last Vaporetti for the bus station.

We decided to rent a car a day early since we did not want drag all of our gear through the public transportation again. We took a bus from the station on Venice to the airport to pick up the car. The only mistake we made was following the signs for “rent a car",” that took us to the parking lots where the cars were…seems logical doesn’t it? Well, the rental counters were back in the terminal, not where the signs say “rent a car.” So, Kim and the kids stayed out there while I went in and got the paperwork done. We finally got our car and were on our way. Kim has done an awesome job of planning out all of our travel needs and what bus to take, etc.

Coming around to Punti Sabioni on land was about a 50 minute trip on nice roads. Seems like a resort area with lots of campgrounds and hotels along the way. We now have a car back at camp to put some of our stuff in along with the tent.

Once back, about 4:30pm, Kim went and did laundry while Jessica, Jack and I went to the pool one last time. We helped her get going and then hit it for a little over an hour.

We finished the night with a dinner and mini-golf that we did not get to last night. Tomorrow we head to the Tuscany area and staying 30 minutes south of Florence. We are camping again and have a place that has a private bathroom on our tent site, should be interesting.

Pictures all at the bottom today….

OK – challenge is on Vaporettos….here we come. You can get us once, but not twice.