Alone in Venice...

Sometimes night trains are great... other times, they're not quite so awesome. Last night on the way from Vienna to Venice I was in a sleeper with five Koreans who didn't speak English. They spent 2 hours before bed taking off their make-up and turned the heat up as far as it could go. At 1am I woke up when the girl above me (it's always the person directly above me) started snoring. The room was boiling - it was like being inside an oven. I got up, turned the heat right down and spent somewhere close to an hour kicking and punching her bunk - to no avail, every time she woke up, she went back to sleep without rolling over. Eventually I fell asleep out of pure exhaustion. An hour later (3am), the passport guys came through and woke everyone up, although I don't know why, as we weren't going outside the borders of the Schengen thingy. Blessedly, snoring girl had stopped snoring! I soon realised why - turning the heat right down made her turn onto her side and curl up into a ball to keep warm. Unfortunately my wonderful roommates noticed that I had turned the heat down and turned it back to the "oven" setting again. I gave up and slept fitfully until 6am, when they started putting their makeup on again. (It's an overnight train, no one expects you to look like you just stepped off a catwalk...). We actually got breakfast on this train, so after bread, jam and coffee I was feeling a little more alert and managed to find an empty carriage to hang around in for the 2 hours until Venice.

Unfortunately, my genius plan backfired - there are no showers at Venice train station. Tired and in desperate need of a shower, I deciphered the public transport ticketing system and eventually after half an hour of platform hopping, found myself aboard a vaporetto to the hostel. I had tried to book this hostel earlier via email, but got no reply - this is actually really annoying, because if I didn't get a bed, I would have to head to another city to find somewhere to sleep for the night. After 45 minutes on the ferry (and we all know how much I love boats), I arrived at the hostel... only to discover a sign on the door saying "Closed from 9:30am to 1:30pm, check-in from 1:30pm". Great - tired, in desperate need of a shower, and now having to carry my heavy backpack around because the hostel was closed.

Did I mention that it was freezing cold, grey and raining? I headed over to Piazza San Marco, which was half-underwater with little boardwalks everywhere, and dodged tourists for 45 minutes, before giving up and finding a restaurant that would allow a solo person with a huge backpack to take up a table for lunch. Pizza was actually quite nice :) I eventually headed back to the hostel and sat around reading until it opened at 1:30pm.

Short story is I did get a bed, but I'm doubtful of how much sleep it will provide - this hostel runs only 16 bed dorms (eugh), and upon walking in, what should I find but a bunch of 18 year olds singing dodgy pop songs and talking about all of the wine they were going to drink tonight ("like, totally!").

After that much needed shower I spent the afternoon wandering around laughing at those fake-designer bag vendors evading the police in the backstreets near the Piazza, and ended up catching a romantic twilight vaporetto back to the hostel with my photo of Stephen. Venice is quite pretty after all.