Saturday we woke up to heavy snowfall! The snow was falling heavier in Venice than it had so far in Helsinki! As we set out to find St. Mark's Basilica we heard the alarm for the aqua alta. An aqua alta happens when there is a high tide, wind, and rain/snow in Venice. The aqua alta is the flooding of the streets because the city is an island that is supposedly sinking. When an aqua alta occurs plywood platforms are put out to make walkways through major thoroughfares that become flooded. The other problem with an aqua alta is that the city does not have a sewer system because of its age. The sewage in Venice dumps into the lagoon causing contaminated water to flood the streets when aqua altas occur. We were not able to avoid the water completely and our boots did get wet while walking around. The boots we have are water proof so our feet stayed dry but the contaminated water did leave bacteria on our boots.
Due to the location of our hotel we were not able to get inside until the water receded some so we went to train station and ate lunch before returning to our room. After we rested for about 30 minutes we left for a scheduled tour of three surrounding islands. One island (Morano) had a glass blowing shop that we were able to tour. After leaving there we went to Torchello and visited two very old churches. The last island was Burano, a fishing island with very brightly colored houses. After the tour finished we got some supper and walked around St. Mark's Square before returning to the hotel for the night.
On Sunday we went to Doge's Palace to tour it and the prison. The palace housed the doge, which was the ruler of the city from the 12th-17th centuries. Slowly his power declined until the position no longer existed. The palace also held the senate chambers, judicial courts and the doge's apartment. It took us about 2 hours to walk through the palace and accompanying prison. After that we got lunch and came back to the basilica. The main part of the church was closed for a special Christmas program so we went through the museum that has some very old tapestries and mosaics.
We returned to the hotel after touring the basilica and relaxed until supper time. We got our supper to go and returned to the hotel to eat. We went to bed early because we had to leave around 6am for a tour the next day in Bologna. Well, around 4am I woke up with a bad stomach bug that lasted all day. Needless to say our tour was canceled.
The next day I was able to keep water and two bites of a croissant down at breakfast, but I could not walk more than 100 yards without feeling sick again. I was able to finish my croissant at lunch and keep down a few glasses of pineapple juice. That night we went to bed early because we had to get up at 4am to get to the airport on time for our flight.
We had not been in bed long when Randall got up with the same symptoms that I had the day before. We did make it to the airport on time and we were able to get to Paris without incident. When we got to Paris we saw to the 11am flight to Helsinki had been delayed. Our flight at 12:20 was still on time so we did not think anything of it at the time.
After half an hour or so we were told by an airport employee that our flight had been delayed for two hours. This did not show up on the flight screens until after our flight was supposed to take off. When we asked what was going on we were told that it was behind due to bad weather and that we should be leaving in two hours. 3.5 hours later two planes arrived for Helsinki, one was our plane and the other was for the flight that was scheduled to leave around 4pm. The 4pm flight was boarded and took off before us! This was slightly aggravating but there was nothing that we could do about it so we just let it go. As we were waiting on the taxiway our pilot told us that maintenance caused the delay in our flight.
Once we arrived in Helsinki we went to baggage claim and were told that 4 planes landed at the same time and only one crew was unloading all the planes. So we waited for about 3 hours looking for our bag until the unloading gate was closed. Once we realized that we were not going to get our bag we talked to someone and report it so that we could hopefully get it soon.
We still do not have our bag but it is supposed to be among 500 hundred other bags that are "orphaned" in the Helsinki airport! Hopefully we can get it tomorrow when we go to pick up Mr. Tim and Mrs. Vicki for their visit.
We do not have pictures of the Basilica and Doge's Palace because they did not allow us to take any.
Click on the image to see more.
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| Venice |
