Taxi!

Next stop – Venice!

We successfully conquered the train and arrived in Venice, happy and refreshed! Upon exiting the Santa Lucia railway station in Venice, we were greeted with our first view of Venice…

Pretty cool view to come across as soon as we walked out of the train station, even though the weather had turned dreary.

After extensive Venice transport research, I had come to a few conclusions:

A. Water taxi’s were VERY expensive (but would bring us right to the hotel)
B. Water buses were much cheaper, but required navigating a huge maze of unmarked alleys to locate our final destination. Internet research yielded helpful instructions like this:

We had made the fiscally responsible decision before arriving to take the water bus. And promptly changed our minds upon arriving (a decision aided by the now pouring rain.) We made a beeline for the water taxi station, caught a boat immediately, and we were on our way.

Now that the credit card bill has arrived, I might regret a few of the impulsive, money-is-no-object vacation decisions we made on this trip. But at that time as we settled into the relatively warm & dry shelter of the boat, we all happily high-fived one another and prepared for our next adventure.

The first thing we learned about Venice was that dreary weather doesn’t keep anybody inside. Everywhere we passed busy water taxis, water buses, motorboats, raincoat swaddled gondoliers and gondola riders, and umbrella carting tourists and locals were out in droves. The canal and the alleys and bridges through Venice are constantly crowded, but the view is so unique and amazing everywhere you look you don’t even mind

We were able to use about 3 years worth of saved up Starwood Preferred Guest points (linked up to our American Express card) to secure a room in an amazing hotel – truthfully the nicest hotel we’ve ever stayed in. The hotel was called the Westin Regina Europa Hotel. And they totally hooked us up with a canal view suite. Next time I have a spare 30,000 or so hotel points, I’m totally there!

The taxi dropped us at the hotels private dock (which was way more impressive than the unassuming pedestrian entrance, which is tucked down a hidden alley).

Here are a few first impression pictures upon arriving at our hotel.

This is across the view from the hotel boat dock across the canal.