Venice to Milan

The horrible alarm clock went off at 5am, and we bounced spryly out of bed and into the shower.  Okay, that may not be an entirely accurate description of what happened, but we did get up and get moving on time.  Checkout was uneventful, and we made our way to the boat station just in time to see one pull away.  Now we were running early, but this still induced panic.  After a few minutes of concern we actually read the schedule and realized that not only was that not our boat, but in fact, had we gotten on it, it would have taken us in the wrong direction.  So that worked out.  

We did eventually get on the correct boat, which took us to the train station, where, in a moment of rare forward thinking, we decided, since we had some time, to double check that we didn't need any additional paper tickets or whatnot.  Turns out, in fact, we need the confirmation code, which we did not have, and that there is no wifi in the train station.  We were very fortunate that the information desk staff spoke nearly fluent English and let us use their computer to log into my email, find the confirmation message, and print it out.  Whew.  

We are now on board a train to Milan and should arrive about 9:25, in time to get breakfast at our hotel there before our tour this afternoon.  This train is huge, clean, and awesome, and at least allegedly has wifi, though I have not been able to connect yet.  Also, announcements are in Italian and English (and maybe French and German too, I wasn't paying that much attention), which I consider to be very kind of them because my Italian is definitely not up to managing details like "please lower the volume on your mobile phones in order not to disturb fellow passengers".

We have determined why the train was so awesome... apparently there are such things as assigned seats and we were in the wrong ones.  The conductor kindly informed us of this when she checked out tickets, but said we could stay there unless someone came with tickets for those seats.  Which, someone did at the next stop.  Which necessitated us climbing through seven train cars with our bags to get to our actual seats which, while still better than Amtrak, are not nearly as nice.

After that little bit of drama we slept most of the way to Milan, stumbled out of the (very impressive) train station to find out hotel, and we (unsurprisingly, since it was about 9:30am) told our room wasn't ready yet.  No problem, they took our bags and directed us to breakfast.  Can I be a First World complainer and gripe that yes I do expect my breakfast comped at Hilton hotels even when I haven't checked in yet.

I have to say, if Milan wants to compete with Venice in our hearts, it has to catch up quickly, we're only here overnight and so far, Venice is ahead by a fair margin!

Marty and Lyle