We also had a well-deserved lie in until 09:30 hrs. cursing that it was not economically viable to stay another night in this cosy nest. We had to change up some more money in the bank across the road to pay our hotel bill and it was with mixed emotions that we discovered that the bank rate was 1,690 Italian Lira per US$ dollar or 2,400 Italian Lira per £1 sterling. It meant that things were marginally cheaper than we thought, but we had been ripped off with a poor rate of exchange at the autoroute stop.
We bought a 500 Italian Lira bus ticket from a newsstand and boosted our morale with a coffee break in a trendy stand-up joint by the Number 7 Bus Stop. We missed two buses due to the fact that they were not displaying a number and we ignored the Venizia headboard as we were under the impression that we were already in Venice.
We arrived at our destination, the Piazzale Roma which is a large square located at the end of the Ponte della Libertà and at the entrance of Venice. It is one of the only places in the city centre that is accessible to cars and buses. The Piazzale is not particularly interesting for tourists, but it is important since it is the city’s main bus station.
We quickly found the Tourist Information Booth which was overstaffed by eight giggly girls. They proved to be a lot of fun but totally useless on the information front. It was their first day, they apologised as they giggled and confused German language with English. Bewildered and 2,000 Italian Lira lighter we set off to find the main Tourist Bureau on Piazza San Marco, clutching an expensive map and a sheaf of useless information booklets in foreign languages.
Piazza San Marco, often known in English as St Mark's Square, is the principal public square of Venice, Italy, where it is generally known just as la Piazza ("the Square"). All other urban spaces in the city (except the Piazzetta and the Piazzale Roma) are called campi ("fields").
Our initial impressions of the canal-ridden historical township were favourable, and the slow overclouding of the sky did less to dampen our enthusiasm than the prices quoted for hotel rooms. We found from a boisterous woppy(Italian)-looking group of Aussie birds that the Carettoni at Lista di Spagna 130 (Ferrovia) – don’t ask me I just copied this down from a card – 30121 Venezia was the cheapest place around.
Lista di Spagna is not the most appealing part of Venice. It does, however, serve its purpose as a shopping and dining location, as long as you are not visiting on a Sunday! It is also the most direct walking route between the cruise ship terminal and San Marco Square. The name Lista comes from the Italian verb meaning ‘to delimit’, and it represented a part of the street marked by white Istrian stones, within which foreign diplomats could enjoy diplomatic immunity.
The Carettoni offered a double room for 22,000 Italian Lira which was warm and comfortable, in fact much better than we were used to. An abortive tour failed to find a cheaper crash pad, so we steamed in. Most hotels here had a crumbling ruinous exterior which gave rise to hopes of economy, when a step over the threshold revealed a hidden spaceship.
The room rate quoted was easily mistaken for a nine-figure countdown before the craft took off to another cosmos. These ultramodern space age interiors seemed to have been built internally without disturbing the external film set façade that characterises Venice.
We gratefully dumped our baggage in our new bedroom and set off to the Piazza San Marco full of naivety and premature joys of spring. Our hopes were dashed against the proverbial rocks as we discovered the true nature of Venice.
The whole town was a model of the future cunningly disguised as a museum of the past. Beneath the fading cracked veneer a thriving confidence trick was in full swing. Super modern stores, stamped from the same mould, sold extortionately priced conveniences relying on the tourist’s inability to grasp conversion of the multifigured price tags into sobering home sums.
Richly dressed mannequins stalked the streets like a moving Madame Tussauds, which left those of us without expensive furs or exclusive Parisian extravert fashionwear feeling shabby and underdressed. As all of the shops were shut and the restaurants would not allow entrance to lower level of humanity who could only afford £1 coffee without the indulgence of a scanty meal that you would require a mortgage to afford.
Incidentally, Madame Tussauds is a wax museum in London; it has smaller museums in a number of other major cities. It was founded by wax sculptor Marie Tussaud in 1835. It used to be spelled as "Madame Tussaud's"; the apostrophe is no longer used. Madame Tussauds is a major tourist attraction in London, displaying the waxworks of famous and historical figures, as well as popular film and television characters played by famous actors.
We headed back to our hotel and our spirits lifted as we passed a cinema showing the American movie “WarGames”, a new Hollywood release in June 1983 and directed by John Badham. With Matthew Broderick, Ally Sheedy, John Wood, Dabney Coleman. A young man finds a back door into a military central computer in which reality is confused with game-playing, possibly starting World War III.
We whiled away until 15:40 hrs., the first screening of WarGames, in a reasonably priced café on the main Piazzale Roma to Piazza San Marco drag. We sipped our coffee and fought back the tears in a near nadir of despair. At this rate of spending our money wouldn’t last five minutes.
At 15:30 hrs. we rushed off to the cinema to catch the film and despite our low ebb of spirit, we overrode the shock of the film having been dubbed into Italian rather than having subtitles, and gleaned enough to make sense of this overdramatised fantasy.
We made our way back through the now busy streets which relied on the cover of night to promote the illusion and cover the irregularities of this millionaire deception, this Italian Disneyland. We bought some bread rolls and an extensive selection of fillings from the now thriving shops and headed back to our room for a Thasos-style smorgasbord feast and some morale boosting music.
The resultant relaxation was just the ticket and the world began to seem like a rosier place as we passed out into oblivion at 23:00 hrs.
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