No photos today, for reasons which will become obvious!
We set off for Venice on a cold rainy day, and the weather only got worse. The plane was on time and we were quickly through passport control, though there was a very long wait for baggage. We discovered there were ticket machines for both the Alilaguna boat into Venice and the 7 day public transport tickets for the vaporetto. We were able to use the machine to collect the vaporetto tickets we had already bought on-line, but we had to join a queue to collect our Alilaguna tickets. Another time, we might not bother getting the tickets on-line since there was no queue at the ticket machines, but long queues at the ticket offices.
I got a text from my friend to say that she had fallen and broken her arm, and had gone to the hospital. She pointed out that we would need to meet her there if we wanted to get into the flat, as she had the keys. So we took an Alilaguna boat which stopped at the hospital, joining another queue. The strong wind and the wake from passing speedboats made the lagoon quite rough, even though our boat stopped whenever a speedboat approached. Not only was it very windy, the rain was very heavy and so visibility was very limited - hence the lack of photos.
When we reached the boat dock at the hospital I found it hard to get off the boat as it was moving up and down so much, and Paul had to take my suitcase off as I doubt I could have managed it. The rain was heavy and it was too windy for umbrellas, so we dragged our suitcases through the rain to the hospital, relieved that we had no clothes in our backpacks, as they were getting even wetter than our suitcases.
By the time we had found the Emergency Department, our friend had been X-Rayed, had her bones set and had her arm plastered, so we just waited until she had her prescription for painkillers, and then braved the weather again to get a vaporetto to the nearest stop to the flat. Once again, I found it difficult to get into and out of the heaving boat, though by the time we got out at San Pietro, the rain had slackened a lot.
During the walk to the flat, my back became painful again and during a subsequent visit to the supermarket for supper, it became much worse, which did not bode well for the holiday. Supper was late, and we all went to bed, though it was a long time before I was able to sleep as my back was so bad.
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