Rats Drown in Venice !

The sky cracked open and let loose with a fury that could hold its own against any Iowa rainstorm. The difference was it didn’t let up after an hour. It just kept raining. Buckets.  We ran from street corner to street corner dragging our luggage in the wake behind us. At one point we shared a church alcove with six other soaking wet humans and one very unhappy cat. (the church itself was locked)  But, let me start over from the beginning:

It started in Madrid when our flight was delayed for 4 hours. It caused us to arrive long after dark. But, so far, no problem.  We wrestled the machine in the airport and, finally, with help from a kind Brit, managed to buy two tickets for the Vaporatto (water bus) that would take us into the city.

Just as we began the 7-minute walk down to the Vaporetto (no kidding – they measure it by minutes and have little signs of encouragement along the way..”Only 6 minutes more,  Just 5 minutes…etc”….) it began to drizzle. By the time we reached the Vaporetto it was beginning to get serious. But still, no problem. The ride into the city would take nearly an hour. Surely the rain would be finished in that time?

NOT!

After much confusion over where and when to get off the Vaporetto (no announcements were made and the rain made it hard to read signs) we finally disembarked at Saint Mark’s Square. It was as dark as the devils own colon and raining like the gods poured buckets straight over our heads.

 Welcome to Venice; The city of Water.

It’s a bit of a blur now as I write this 10 days after the fact, but let’s just say that the next 30 minutes , or more, involved a lot of running back and forth, trying to get our bearings. I asked a lot questions in very poor Spanish (and, no, Spanish is NOT enough like Italian to be able to communicate - at least not my sloppy Spanish) Eventually we dragged our sorry selves and our sopping luggage aboard another Vaporetto and rode on until the next stop:  Academia Bridge.  Norm now calls it the “Bridge of Pain,”   because as the ‘burro’ he was lugging most of the now wet luggage. We were making progress.  From our directions, our B & B (a Music School with a B & B inside) should only a few blocks away  -- once we climbed the 30 steps up, over and down the bridge that spanned the canal. We (Norm) hauled our luggage up and over the bridge) and we descended into  water- world- hell on the other side.  Now ankle deep in water we let loose a few explicatives. Some even began with the letter ‘F’ and that didn’t stand for ‘fun.  But we were almost there!  Our simple directions (copied from the Rick Steves Travel Guide) involved only two more blocks and as many turns.

NOT!

It was only after several increasingly desperate tries to find the right intersections that Nancy parked Norm and all our bags in the church alcove (with the wet cat and other people) and set out to find help. Our assumption (and remember what happens when you ass-u-me) was that my Spanish might be helpful in getting directions in Italian.

NOT!

One ‘helpful’ family sent me off around the block; another gentleman just looked at me blankly and yelled back in German. (Note to self: Talking LOUDER does not make it any easier to understand a foreign language)

So, I decided to start fresh. The rain still poured and it’d been at least 30 minutes now of wading about Venice.  It’s midnight and I look like a good candidate to win a wet T-shirt contest.  Returning to the Bridge of Pain I pulled my now sopping scrap of paper with directions from my pocket: “Take the first Left after the bridge “it read.   Okay. I moved forward and took the first narrow winding street that I saw.  Around the first corner I found three young people, two women and one man,  huddled in a doorway to protect from the rain, smoking marijuana.  I asked to make certain I was headed in the correct direction.

 “Where do you go?” asked the young man in broken English.

I pulled the scrap of paper from my pocket and opened my hand. The wet wad of newsprint fell apart. As I hastily tried to piece the pieces back together to show the name and address we all began to laugh. It was a Magical Moment. The Venetian teenagers high on MJ and one old American high of life laughed until we nearly wet ourselves, which at that time would not have shown anyway.  And so we shared a language that crosses all language barriers. The language of laughter.

Just then and bedraggled , dripping Norm came around the corner dragging all our bags with him.  I’d been gone so long he began to worry and imagine all sorts of trouble I might have gotten into running about the streets of Venice in the night.

After some discussion and a few cell phone calls our ‘angels’ led us to our B & B which was, indeed, nearby. It was 12:45AM in Venice.

How do you thank three angels? There are not enough words. And they simply ran off  -- “It was nothing.” -- laughing and chattering among themselves.  I’m certain a crazy, old American was being discussed.

But, it WAS something. And we will not forget.  And one day….we will ‘pay it forward.’  I’ll leave our B & B room description, including a shower that only allowed us to wash down to our knees, to the photos to show you.  We hope you enjoy a good laugh at the Harless’s expense.  We truly are….

Living large in Venice,

Norm & Nancy