Off to Venice

Having slept very little I was feeling rather ordinary when I woke … breakfast done it was time to pack and say good bye to all our friends. We headed out along the river towards the town. It was a chilly morning with the threat of rain once more but the walk into town was very easy and probably not more than 4 or 5 km all up. We first went back to the square where I had last seen my wallet – to no avail, and then tried several ATMs but none would accept my back up card. We sent our helmets and bike gear back to Australia via the post office and then kept wandering trying to find a reloadable cash card or the like again … with no success! We ended up at a Starbucks near the station where we paid a ridiculous $7 AUD each for an espresso – at least we got a couple of hours on the WiFi and the use of the toilet – what else is Starbucks good for! I was able to message Sam and let him know about the wallet issue and asked him if he wanted anything bought back – a carton of smokes! Great! Kristin rang her family and got an update on all the news, especially on how her puppy girl was going!
We remained sheltering in Starbucks while a thunderstorm made i’s presence felt and then crossed to the station where we validated our Eurail pass and soon found our train – comfortably seated in first class we settled back for our 6.5 hour trip Milan – accompanied by sandwiches made from bits and pieces from the breakfast buffet and a small bottle of wine from the bar.
The countryside of Switzerland was just amazing. Fairy-tale villages and steep mountains crowned with snow even at the end of summer – really quite a stunning vista as we powered along. We were held up at the Italian boarder due to some kind of inspection by the Garda de Finanza (Italian fraud and border police) this meant that the train would be late getting into Milan and that the connection which was supposed to be about 40 minutes would only be about 10. However as things turned out the connecting train was also late (about 30 minutes by the time it got to Venice) and so it wasn’t a stress. Milano Centrale station is pretty big and it was certainly packed with people thronging everywhere when we arrived. Soon enough the train arrived and we were pleased to settle back into the first class carriage (it was a perk of the Eurail “Group” Pass” and enjoy the final 2 an a bit hours of travel.
The Italian countryside was really quite different to Switzerland – even when we were still up in the Alps, the stations and towns we passed changed from fairy tale cute and incredibly neat and clean to suddenly very scruffy and run down. After Milano we were traveling (at about 160km per hour) through mostly flat country side where corn and wine seemed the main crops – off to our left we could still see the mountains however and the occasional lake with islands and villages on them.Read more