heading to venezia!

we took the overnight train from paris to venice, originally uploaded by sproutgirl74.

we ended up taking the night train to venice from paris. we had some snafu's getting out of paris and had to bypass marseilles which was on the list (no old sk8 park for the mister & no laying nekkid on the beach for me - sadness - next trip though!).

the eurail passes were a bit trickier than, hop on, hop off, fly by the seat of your pants...i had a mini meltdown leaving paris because of language barriers, mess ups on tickets, being told we couldn't go several places (marseilles, slovenia...) that we were told previously we could go to. and the reservations? huh? i thought we just got on...apparently not. for the big cities especially, you *have* to reserve your spot before hand, & guess what? you can only do that by standing in lines that are hours, HOURS long. no, apparently there is no website, nor phone number to do this, just lines. very very very long lines to speak with someone you have a very hard time understanding (& really, i know this is my fault, if i was a better language learner...sigh....) ...and then when they mess up your tickets (oh HUGE sigh, for real?) you cannot just go back up to said person that screwed up ALL 5 of your ticket reservations (no, once we are in venice, we cannot leave back out of paris to go to switzerland, we need to leave from *venice* to get to switzerland...oh my!) no, no - you must wait in said line *again*....can you say e.x.a.s.p.e.r.a.t.i.o.n.!!!!!!!!? yep, i had a mini meltdown. tears, stress, the whole bit........we ended up booking the entire rest of our trip the 4th time in line (well, there goes our day in paris) thus nixing our flit around whilst ever we felt like plan...

ahhhhhh....but let's go back to the night train to venice! *that* was pretty cool. we got to see southern france and fields of beautiful sunflowers during sunset and woke up to gorgeous, warm, (hallelujah, i'd been freezing & wet for a long time) sunshine - yay venice!! we had 3 other people in our little sausage/sardine sleeping quarters compartment that was about 10x8 - kinda snuggy in there but i slept just fine! we departed the train and waited a while for the bus in the wrong place (thus the bus drawing to fusina up there!) & then onto camping fusina - we loved this place! i'll tell more about it & getting around venice closer to the other photos.... :)