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21.10.10
Yesterday was the most eventful day of the trip thus far! When we arrived at our 1 star hotel Marte in Venice, we were welcomed by a friendly, elderly lady in her eighties. We can now add senile to her description! When we checked in, she offered us a 'discounted rate' of 60 euros per night. She also gave us two breakfast vouchers for each of the days we were scheduled to stay there for. When we asked where breakfast was the next day, she gave us another two breakfast tickets. This was after she tried to negotiate breakfast out of the package by saying that we could only have breakfast if we paid 70 euros per night. Breakfast was great! It was downstairs at a neighbouring cafe. We managed to finally get our coffee order right and we had a choice of croissant each morning! Not bad for a 1 star hotel! We spent the rest of the day walking venice! We visited San Marco where hoards of tourists congregated. It was great to people watch especially seeing the gypsies work their magic with the large crowds and digging in the bins for scraps of food. Our main agenda for the day was to find a laundromat! We had no more clean clothes and were desperate to feel clean material against our skin. We found a poster with a map leading us to a self service laundromat/internet service in the Jewish Ghetto of Venice. We walked for hours to locate the laundromat and eventually tracked it down a few hours later! Turns out that the business closed down two years ago! A few more hours went by and my arms began to hurt after hauling two washing bags across the whole island! I nearly threw them in the water to watch them float down the canals. We found the only other laundromat on the island, but quickly rejected that option when we found out it would cost 20 euros for a load. They definitely had the old supply and demand equation working in their favour. We resorted to washing our socks, undies and other essential items in the basin and hung the wet clothes all around our room. Ofcourse these didn't dry in time before our departure and I am clenching my nose as we speak! A laundromat is definitely a priority for tomorrow. The laundry was not our only problem! We could not draw money anywhere! We didn't understand the Italian options on the ATMs and it kept on telling us some odd error message. Again, we tried nearly every ATM on the island. A traveller tip for those who want to do the whole of Venice in 48 hours; Either try and wash your clothes or find an ATM with an English option. We finally realised that we were trying to draw too much money as our card had a 250 euro withdraw limit (Probably a good thing). Our problems were still not over!! After walking the town a bit more, we grabbed a quick beer at a small pub and visited a local internet cafe. Again, we fell victim to the power of demand as we paid 9 euro to use the internet for an hour! We needed to book our next leg and we were horrified to see that there was no way to get to Austria or Germany! We couldn't find any flights or trains out of Venice. We were not that fussed, because we realised that most people would love to be stuck in our position. We decided that we would go enjoy a dinner before heading to the train station to enquire about possible destinations and routes. Again, we ended up in a fight with the restaurant manager who charged us a service charge after we picked his restaurant specifically because he had told us that there was no service charge payable! We were furious!! It was time to go "home" to Hotel Marte. The hotel was set on the third floor of a rundown, old building with the whole second floor abandoned with the windows boarded up! I called it quaint but Zoe called it a rat's nest. I didn't tell Zoe until after we left the hotel that I thought it had bedbugs. She complained that she was itchy the first night and I can confirm that there were definitely some creatures walking all over me! The brochure boasted that the hotel was completely refurbished in 1991! It's funny to think that our room could have possibly been occupied for 6935 nights since its last refurbishement. The bedbugs weren't the only thing keeping us awake, two other hotel staff members on different shifts kept on waking us up by unlocking our door to show our room to potential guests! Our room was the closest to the lobby and was used to show guests. We would both sit up like meercats as soon as we would hear the key turn. Zoe called out "hello" only to hear a male voice say "not to worry!" It turns out that the Senile old lady at reception lost all records of our check-in information. Not only did the other staff members not know we were there but she had completely forgotten us! It had only been 2 nights ago since she had a long conversation with me in Italian. The other lady told us that the cost of the room was 75 euro per night and we corrected her by telling her that the elderly lady had offered us 60 euros per night. She apologised and said "that will be 60 euros thanks!" They thought we had only been there for one night! We could have got away with a free nights accomodation, but instead we decided to be honest and corrected her! They couldn't beelieve their luck! I am pretty sure that if their MIS records show that their occupancy rate is currently 40%, it is probably closer to 90%. Anyway, we got great entertainment from the event! We still didn't have a way out of Venice, as the information booth had closed the previous night. George called to to suggest that we go to Cyprus to visit Zoe's Yai-Yai. The tickets were a bit too pricey so we decided to go back to the train station to find a new destination! We were advised to go to Verona where we will be able to get on a train to Innsbruck Austria. We jumped on the hour and a half train to Verona. The train was pretty luxurious even for second class tickets at 37 euros for both of us. When we got to Verona, we hit a bit of a snag! We arrived at 11.00 a.m and we were told the next train to Innsbruck would only be at 1 a.m the following morning. We were'n't sure how far away we were from the city centre, how much it would cost to get there and where we would stay. We probed a little further and fould a helpful man who suggested that we jump on a 3 hour train to a small town outside of Bolzano where we would be able to get a train to Innsbruck. We followed his suggestion and succeeded. When we arrived at the next station to board the connecting train to Innsbruck it began to snow! We could not believe that it was snowing. We thought that the winter was at least a month away! It turns out the ski slopes are already open and we definitely did not pack appropriate clothing for this type of weather. When we were trying to buy a ticket to Innsbruck, we met our first friend Grace. She was a Gold Coaster heading to Innsbruck to visit a friend. Small world! Innsbruck is incredible! Probably one of the most beautiful cities I have been to! It is situated at the base of beautiful snow capped mountains lined with pine trees. I just want to hit the slopes. We walked the city tonight before tucking into a veggies and jasmine rice served in a coconut sauce! We even visited the Austrian version of Aldi and Spar! I think we will need to buy gloves and a beanie tomorrow, head to the laundromat, explore the city a bit more, visit the Swarovski Crystal attraction and find out about a possible ski trip!!
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Robba* Hehehehe! Ah you gotta love Venice! Have you noticed all the animal poo's all over the place?? When I was there I though humans were just dumping in the street but then I saw a dog pooping and was like "ohhhhhhhhh!" Cos there isn't much grass there ;)
Robba* Flip the comment below was meant for Venice :) Ooops!
Robba* Advice: Draw money at each station, depends on how long you are there for but 250euro should definitely last you 3 days in a city, maybe not including hostel fees, depends how stingy you are being with costs..