Blog #7 - Catching Up From Monte Bianco

This will be a relatively short blog to tell you that we need to catch up on our stories.  Although our hotel in Venice had wireless Internet connectivity, I didn't understand that it did not work from the top floor of the hotel where our room was and that I had to come down two floors to the lobby to get it to work.  Also, since we were in Venice for a short time with so much too see, we did not spend much time at the hotel to find out the answer as to why we could not connect to post our blog.  The hotel staff went home at 7:00 PM and we gained entry to the hotel after this hour by pressing a button and telling the person on the intercom our name and room number. This person then unlocked the front door remotely and we went in.  We learned that this person provided the same service for many hotels in Venice because they are all small and unstaffed at night.  So please check back in later for some blogs about our adventures in Venice.

Lorne outside Venice Train Station in front of Grand Canal



We saw many interesting things in Venice that we will blog about later and add some pictures.  Right now we are in Courmayeur in the Italian Alps and it's 11:45 PM.  Tomorrow we will meet our guide in our hotel lobby at 8:45 AM and proceed to catch the cable car up Monte Bianco for our excursion.  We met Andrew and Birgit earlier this evening and went out for a fine dinner where we tried several local dishes.  Sandy has decided to come up with us on the cable car ride us for the panoramic view and then when we go on the hike, she will return to the village for some shopping and relaxation.

Sandt in front of our hotel in Courmayeur with the Italian Alps in the background.  We can't see Monte Bianco yet because it is hidden by other mountains.

For now I will just tell one story, which is about our experience boarding the train in Rome to go to Venice.  You may recall the story about the Gypsies who hang around the train station waiting to pick the pockets of tourists and how they helped us get our tickets, although we were very cautious not to let them pick our pockets. Well, these gypsies are everywhere looking for any chance to make a buck.  When we went to get on our train, we looked at our ticket and saw that we had reserved seats for first class in car number 2 on the Rome to Venice train.  We went to what we thought was car number 2 and waited patiently while a large group of Italians loaded luggage and blocked the entrance to the car.  A gypsy girl came along and wanted to help us with our luggage, but since she was wearing some clothes that looked somewhat official, I thought she was with the train company.  I showed her our ticket and she said we were at the wrong car and then I saw that all the cars had a big number 2 marked on them (which I never found out why) and a smaller number for the car number.  We were actually at car number 7. The gypsy girl grabbed some of our luggage and proceeded to lead us down to the other end of the train to our car.  She started loading our luggage onto the train and then showed us where our seats were.  However, there was an English-speaking woman in one of our seats and the gypsy girl immediately told the woman to get out of our seat in a very gruff manner.  The woman complained to us saying, "you know that woman doesn't work for the train station, she has no authority".  We just shrugged and said that we had reserved seats.  The woman just had a EuroRail pass that does not guarantee a seat, so she had to vacate the seat for us since we had it reserved.  And it was a very nice seat indeed, which I enjoyed very much thanks to the gypsy who knew what was right.  The English speaking woman left in huff to find a seat in the second class cars and I gave the gypsy girl a 5 Euro tip, which she accepted with a sneer and took off.  Maybe she wanted more because our bags were big and heavy and she did get rid of the annoying woman in our seat for us, but considering I never asked for her help, I think it was fair enough.

Sandy in front of our train at the Venice Train Station.  The trains in Italy seem to be as good as the trains in Japan.  They are very fast as we saw when one passed us when we were driving from Venice to Courmayeur earlier today.