Day 1 – Heading for Venice

..in which our hero has a go at travel journalism for no good reason.

Today marks the first day of my proper holiday. We are heading off to a couple of places we’ve never been to before, Venice and one of the Italian Lakes. We flew out of East Midlands airport this afternoon courtesy of Ryanair. We fly with them because we quite like the colour of the seat backs in the plane (a particularly garish yellow) and because they are by far the cheapest way to travel. There are no other reasons to fly this way. Having said that, and ignoring the scrum to get the seats with legroomthe cabin crew were pleasant and the plane arrived on time.

My travel tip for Ryanair: Have the “double drink and chocolate muffin” deal”. This only costs 10 euros for two of you and almost represents good value.  Oh, and don’t buy the lottery tickets. You are almost as likely to win these as you are to be involved in an air crash. And you shouldn’t tempt fate to go for the double whammy. Imagine how fed up you’d feel fingering your winning scratch card as the plane plummeted towards the earth.

Once we arrived at the airport (which is almost, but not quite, near to Venice) we grabbed a coach to the hotel. Another tip. Make sure you have a 10 euro note (preferably a newish one) to buy a couple of coach tickets. Get them from the machine while you wait for your luggage to turn up.

Staying in Venice is very expensive. So we didn’t. We found a hotel in Venice Mestre (I think Mestre is Italian for suburb). This place is only around 10 minutes or so from Venice proper.  We stayed in Hotel Aaaron.  This is both a hotel and an experiment in capsule living. Our bedroom was exactly that. A room just big enough to hold a bed, a tiny desk and bathroom. But everything was shiny new, the staff were great, the WIFI worked and the breakfasts were lovely. And since you don’t go on holiday to sit in a hotel room, it is perfect. Tomorrow we head for Venice proper.