Adriatic Treasures: Croatia to Venice
Mike and Judy Henderson
September 13-29, 2019
I'm going to leave the map at the start of each page so you can see where we are.
9/28/2019 (Saturday) After we discovered last night that we had missed the performance, I checked on the web to see what was playing at La Fenice on Saturday. They weren't doing The Barber of Seville but they were doing another Rossini opera, The Silken Ladder, for the 3:30pm matinee, and there were still seats available. Not the best seats but decent seats - a box on the second level on the side.
Saturday morning I bought the seats and worked with the front desk people to get the tickets printed out. You have to have paper tickets for La Fenice. Judy wasn't feeling well so we stayed in the hotel room in the morning and I worked on this blog.
We left for the opera about 1pm so that we'd have time for lunch.
The water level was high and waves were breaking on the shoreline.
Plaza San Marco had some flooding and they had put out the elevated walkways. There are drains in the plaza that drain rainwater to the sea. But when the sea rises, water flows back through the drains and floods the plaza.
We found a nice restaurant right next to La Fenice (in fact, built directly against it) and had one of those leisurely Italian lunches in a garden area, away from the crowds. We talked to the waiter about the fire at La Fenice and how it affected the restaurant. He said the firemen were there for 23 hours, and the restaurant was closed for ten days, but with La Fenice out of operation for several years it must have severely impacted their business.
Shortly before 3pm we went to La Fenice.
And surprise! We ran into Victor and Laura in front of the theater! They were just out walking - they were not going to the opera. They had also attended the performance we heard the previous evening.
They took this shot of Judy and me.
We went in. Here's the lobby area.
The stairs leading to the box seats.
Some interior views of the theatre. I've tried to color correct these pictures.
The stage area.
The opposite side of the theater.
The rear of the theater showing the royal box.
Judy and me in our box seat.
Some detail of the decoration on the boxes across from us.
And some ceiling decoration.
A view of the box from the back of the box. There are four seats, and we shared the box with a woman from Russia.
And then the show started.
The cast taking a bow.
The orchestra conductor taking a bow. I noticed that as soon as the opera was over, the musicians took off. By the time the conductor took his bow, there was no one left in the pit:-)
That evening we went for a walk away from Plaza San Marcos - toward the park shown in green at the bottom right of the next picture.
We passed Via Giuseppe Garibaldi.
This hotel is on Via Giuseppe Garibaldi, not far from where the above picture was taken.
As the sun set, it illuminated the Basilica di Santa Maria della Salute. To the left is the Church of San Giorgio Maggiore, and to the right is the Campanile di San Marco in Plaza San Marco.
A bit later the colors deepened.
Judy took this picture of me with the Campanile di San Marco in the background.
We stopped at a little cafe to enjoy our last sunset in Venice, and have a beer. Then it was off to bed for a 4am wakeup. Bag pull is at 6am and we depart at 6:30.
9/29/2019 (Sunday) We were up at 4am and ready for the 6am bag pull (which was right on time).
Our Tauck transportation person met us in the lobby. She had arranged a water taxi to take us to the Marco Polo airport, where another Tauck representative will meet us.
She walked us to the water taxi. I didn't get a picture of the taxi this morning but here's a picture from the web of the exact same taxi.
Judy boarding the taxi.
The pilot headed into Rio de St. Lorenzo, one of the canals that wind through Venice.
A bit further on.
I understand that a water taxi to the airport is fairly expensive, but it was quite a ride. The fare is based on the time of day, number of passengers, and number of bags. Recommended, especially while the city is asleep.
I've lightened up these pictures so you can see the detail - but it was dark at this hour. I believe this is Rio di San Giovanni Laterano. His final turn took us to Rio di Santa Glustina.
Eventually we came out on the other side of Venice, and followed a channel along the island. I did not lighten this picture so you can see how dark it was. The bright light ahead is the boat entrance to the emergency room at the hospital. I think this is Ospedale SS Giovanni e Paolo.
The Venice island hospital is on this side of the island.
You can drive to the ER with your boat. There is a protected boatport for unloading.
A Vaporetto was taking early commuters to work.
There was a fair amount of traffic in the channel for this time of morning.
A view out the back of the taxi after another boat passed us going the other way. We bounced and splashed in his wake, but it was exciting.
Eventually we could see the lights of the airport.
The docking area of the airport.
We docked and the baggage handlers took our luggage.
Our Tauck representative met us and took us to the check-in counters. We were taken care of every step of the way.
It was a long walk from the docks to the counters but there was a moving sidewalk. Its a modern airport.
The baggage guy met us at the counter with our bags.
Judy checked us in with Lufthansa.
We were able to use the Marco Polo lounge, which was nice because we had not had breakfast. Our flight boarded about two hours later.
When they called us for the flight, we had to take a bus to the aircraft.
And here's the plane for our leg to Munich - an Embraer E190 (or E195). It's a nice plane, with only two seats on each side, which made for a comfortable ride.
We were delayed taking off which worried us because we have a tight connection in Munich.
Our flight took us over the Swiss Alps.
We arrived at Munich a bit late. Munich is a large, sprawling airport. This picture only shows a small part of the airport.
We had to really hustle to get to our gate. We came in on a domestic flight and were leaving on an international flight so our departure gate was in a different terminal. We had to take a shuttle train and go up and down escalators several times. Additionally, we had to go through passport control (which was fairly quick), and a second (USA) check before we were allowed to the departure gate. Luckily, they waved Judy and me past the final security (x-ray) check. We made it. However, we wondered if our luggage did the same.
Here's the aircraft for our flight to LAX - an Airbus A380-800. It's a good, comfortable plane.
The flight was long - about 12 hours - but we finally arrived at LAX.
We both have Global Entry so clearing Customs and Passport Control was quick. Our bags did arrive, although it took a while and kept us in suspense. As we exited the terminal, our driver was waiting for us and took us to the car.
Since it was Sunday, there wasn't too much traffic and we made it home fairly quickly. We tried to stay up until about 8pm but were exhausted - it was more than 24 hours since we woke up in Venice.
Of course, we woke up about 3am:-)
9/30/2019 (Monday) No trip is over until we pick up Skipper from boarding. We couldn't pick him up until about 10am and we had awakened early so we unpacked and Judy started laundry. I did some work on this blog. About 9am we left to get Skipper.
He does fairly well at boarding but he was definitely happy to see us.
That's the end of another trip. Our next trip is less adventuresome - we go to Hawaii with Tauck. Don't even need passports for that trip!
