Paris - Venice 15.11.2012

At 6.15 am this morning our taxi arrived to take us to Gare de Lyon for our train trip to Venice. Another huge train station. Our seats in 1st Class were very comfortable and the train was quiet and smooth. During our journey the scenery was amazing. It went from the city to industrial and then to rural farmland (beef cattle and sugarbeat),and then to the alps, some of which were covered in snow. Unfortunately, there seemed to be a lot of track work, which meant our train was over 45 mins late getting to Milan where we had to change trains !! The next train departed from a different station. The stations are about a 5 min Taxi ride apart, and seeing there was a queue it was looking very unlikely we would make our connection. Along with at least 6 others we got to the train with about 5 mins to spare only to find that they wouldn't let us on the train !!!luckily our tickets had been signed to say the train was late and after a 30 min wait we were on the next train to Venice. During all of this, we met an Argentinian lady in the same predicament!! She had 3 ex husbands, spoke a little of at least 5 languages , and was traveling alone. Arriving into Venice at around 7.45pm was interesting, we caught the Vaporetto (water bus) one stop and then walked back to the Hotel Grand Canal, which was situated right in the Grand Canal. We then strolled around the lane ways near the hotel in a state of wonder!!