Bus Misadventures (or Our First Glimpse of Venice)

As I mentioned in my recent anniversary post, Mr. Traveler and I just celebrated our one year anniversary with a trip to Venice and a cruise through the Eastern Mediterranean. We had an excellent time, despite a little bus mix-up on our arrival. Since I'm still sorting through the combined 1000+ pictures we took, I thought I'd tell you the story of our bus misadventures before diving into our time in Venice, Dubrovnik, Athens, Izmir, and Split. I promise there will be many more pictures in the next few posts to make up for the lack of photos here.

On Wednesday afternoon (the 18th), we arrived at Marco Polo Airport. Earlier that morning, I'd attempted to verify our travel plans online, but something was wrong with the cable and I couldn't connect. "No problem," I though. We have a printout from the hotel. When we get there, we'll just ask someone at the information desk how to get there, and we'll be on our way. We walked up to the tourist information desk, handed the employee the piece of paper and asked for directions. Immediately the phone rang. He answered it and began gesturing wildly as he enthusiastically explained something to the person on the other end of the line. On our paper he wrote, "Line 5. direction: Padova." We waited a minute to see if he'd add something about the stop, but he pushed the paper closer. "That's it."

"Okay," I thought. "Maybe the directions will make more sense once we're outside." We found the stop for Line 5, but there was no mention of Padova on any of the signs. The machine to buy tickets seemed complicated. When I went back inside to ask whether they had a bus map at the transportation desk, I received a flat, "No." At this point, we were both ready to take a taxi, but a couple stopped and offered us their 7 day transportation cards with 2.5 days left.

We got on Bus 5 toward Venezia, since we had no better idea. We arrived on the island, unloaded our suitcase and walked over to the public transportation counter to once again ask for directions. "Take the Padova bus." "Which number?" "No number. Just Padova." Aha! That was our first problem. We were told before to board Bus 5. On the Padova bus, Mr. Traveler programmed the address for the hotel into his Blackberry. Once we got near the address, we pushed the stop button. We dragged the suitcases down the street to the address, but there was no hotel to be found.

Reviewing the address, Mr. Traveler realized that even though he had inputted the address exactly, including the postal code, the phone had used a different code. So, even though we were at 6 Via Colombara, we were in a neighboring village. (Even though the villages have different names, they all Venice for their address.) Scanning the map, Mr. Traveler located the correct address. We had actually ridden right past the hotel on our way. Now we just had to get on the bus going the other direction.

Across the street, I tried to check bus schedules, but it only listed one bus number and no schedule. We boarded the first bus that came our way. Immediately the dot on the phone veered off the desired route and away from our hotel. In a panic (the bus might have actually just made a loop before returning to the other route), we got off immediately, crossed the street, and waited for at least 30 minutes (it seemed much longer) before the next bus arrived.

At the point where the paths converged, we got back off the bus, walked back across the street, and finally asked the bus driver if the bus was headed to Marghera (the village in which our hotel was located -- as Mr. Traveler had figured out). The bus stopped right in front of the hotel. Even though the location of our hotel was a little sketchy (near factories, a truck wash, and a power plant), after over two hours of riding and waiting for the bus, we were just relieved to finally be able to set down our luggage.

Our Hotel

After that, we headed back into Venice for the evening, which I will tell you about soon.