Day-8   May 23

Opatija(Croatia) to Venice(Italy)

Again being blessed with a bright sunny day, we had a sumptuous breakfast on the B&B terrace overlooking the sea and later started out of Opatija and headed west towards Italy making our way back into the Schengen.....

Since adding Venice as one of the way points was an afterthought in this trip, today it was obviously more about the destination than the ride.....We took the Route E61 snaking our way out of Croatia & making our international border crossing thru Starod into Slovenia.

We continue on the E61 passing thru curvy & gently hilly country roads with landscape dominated by farms and lush greenery all around. Meanwhile the clouds above are switching its dim & bright function meaning rain can be expected anytime.....  I rolled on the throttle till we finally passed Krvavi Potok and made our entry into Italy.

This is the beauty of Europe, its mid-morning and we have already travelled thru 3 counties since having breakfast this morning!!  Thereafter we got onto the E70 motoway to save time. Had our lunch and refueled the bike enroute at a rest stop where we meet a lot of other bikers as well.

On the motorway the day started to turn cloudy but we made good time and finally branched off the motorway and as we made our entry into Mestre(near Venice), it started to drizzle! We slowly made our way into the city center and arrived at our Hotel- San Carlo in Mestre.

Since our bike will not be allowed into Venice, after a quick wash we take a local bus that goes over the bridge and finally dumps us into one of the world’s supposedly romantic places- Venezia as the Italians say. Talking of romantic settings, as we get off the bus in Venice, nature indeed decided to shower us with its own water and rain came down upon our heads!

We then get on the shuttle boat that takes us thru the big canals to the center of Venice.  Luckily we were carrying our own 2 ‘separate unromantic umbrellas’ and that came to our rescue...

The maps of this ancient city are so damn detailed we go around in circles and come back to where we started and were not making much progress!!! It was very confusing and we also had to fend the rains. To add to our miseries, the famed romantic (and bloody expensive) Gondola Rides have also been halted due to rains. So there goes in smoke another ‘Romantic attraction’! From all of this I know my lady’s frustration  is growing steadily and at some point something I carelessly blurted out was enough for her to finally blow her lid off this greatly anticipated romantic experience!!! Anyway as wisdom says a lady’s silence is more deadly than a nuclear warhead, so I remain calm as we both wandered around town and waited out the rain.

To our wonderful surprise & good luck the rain stopped, the clouds cleared, the Gondola ride has re-opened and my lady has a nice smile on her face, though I must admit it was purely my insensitivity that was the cause for the black-out.

We are back in business!! The Gondola ride was nice & enjoyable albeit expensive at Euro 100 (after 7pm) for the 40 min ride and it seems the boatman's watch is always running a lot faster than ours!! Anyway being the first tourists to get on the Gondola, I am sure many cameras from around the world from Japan to USA have our pics as tourists at every bridge & arch were clicking our pics.....

Venice was indeed a mystical experience and although not as super-romantic as one would anticipate, its worth a visit. We were back on the bus to Mestre and after we finished dinner, we hit the bed on a very eventful but enjoyable day. Tomorrow heading back to Slovenia on the final leg...