Venice; Saturday, 27 September, 2008

The last time that I had flown from the South Terminal at Gatwick it had been a little bit of a traumatic experience, with the flight being delayed then cancelled, then reinstated then re-cancelled, then reinstated for a second time then delayed before finally taking to the skies over six hours late, and all of that just for a couple of flakes of snow.

A couple of days ago the air traffic control computers, which monitor all the traffic in and out of the London airports, crashed, effectively shutting all the main airports down for a couple of hours, and the delays and cancellations had continued up until today. So, despite a blue sky, and the Gatwick website reporting no delayed flights, I set off, not particularly convinced that I was actually going to get to Italy.

The first thing that struck me, after the painless check in and wander through a virtually deserted security check, was how much quieter the airport is when it’s actually functioning properly. There were still seats available and people weren’t camping out on the escalators.

In the end, my flight was delayed, but only by about 20 minutes, and then the strangest thing happened. After pushing back the plane proceeded to taxi towards the runway, then onto the runway and took straight off, without at any point coming to a halt. A very rare occurrence for Gatwick!

Two uneventful (apart from some turbulence) hours later the plane touched down at Venice airport and 30 minutes after that I found myself sitting on the bus heading in to the city.

Sadly, this being Italy and not Germany or Switzerland, the bus just missed the Vaporetto down the Grand Canal, so I had a 20 minute wait, or so I thought. Then I realised that the next ferry, a couple of minutes later, was an “express” which only stopped at a couple of the stops down the grand canal. There was a possibility that if I caught that it might just overtake the Number 1 I had missed. So I boarded and started my journey down the Grand Canal.

Sure enough, at the stop just before Rialto (where my Vaporetto terminated) we overtook the missed number 1, so I was able to make a quick change, and get to the hotel 20 minutes earlier.

After checking in, I headed back out and caught a Vaporetto down to St Marks Square to have a look around and take a few pictures (and indulge in a small ice-cream, well it is Italy!) before catching the Vaporetto back to Rialto and have a quick wander around there (also making a more important stop at a cash machine!).

Having taken a few photos I decided, as I had just missed the Night-Vaporetto, and the next one wasn’t for another 30 minutes, to walk back to the hotel. At a couple of points I thought I may have got myself lost, in the little back lanes, crossing far more canals that I could remember counting there being between Rialto and my hotel. Eventually, after about 15 minutes walking I came out of a little alleyway and into S Toma’ square. As the Vaporetto stop for my hotel was called S. Toma’ I deduced that I was probably very near the hotel, sure enough as I looked down another alleyway I saw the hotels sign.