This was a strange and very troubling day and a most frustrating one to be sure. To begin, I woke up in London and got ready to go for my new long trek to the Continent. I put my stuff in my bag, making sure I had everything, and in so doing, I apparently overlooked one of the items on my itinerary for the flight schedule to go to Venice. It was not the time, nor was it the date, what I overlooked much to my dismay was the place. I knew I was flying back in to Heathrow, so I figured that is where I was flying out of as well, oh was I wrong. On arriving at Heathrow, I thought I could sit smugly with over an hour and a half or more and think nothing of it, oh contraire! When I got there I was a bit confused, because it told me to go to the north terminal, versus the number system Heathrow has. So, basically what happened was when I got to the counter to ask where I was supposed to go, the nice lady sitting there pointed out to me that my plane was actually leaving from Gatwick, not Heathrow. Man, did I feel stupid! Anyway, so now here I was across town from the place where my plane was leaving in less than an hour and a half, and I did not have the means to get there in that time. I went to the BA counter and asked if there was any possible way I could get a flight to Venice from Heathrow rather than Gatwick, but it was no can do, because only Gatwick had flights to Venice via BA. So, I went to a coach company with the hopes of catching a bus to Gatwick for a reasonable price, one of which I got. I did find myself a coach there, but for £18.00, which I feel was outrageous and knowing the events that came out I figure it would have been smarter for me just to catch the Underground back home and then get a coach from central London to Gatwick, but oh well, at least I had temporary peace of mind.
So after I arrived there, my flight had left some 20 minutes earlier, and I was forced to ask for an alternate flight that I knew to be five hours after the last one for the lovely additional cost of $30 American. So I had not even gotten on the plane yet and this trip was already costing me about $70 more than I thought it would. After I purchased the new ticket, I got into the airport and made a much more thorough examination of it than I had expected to, and during the long wait, I learned something more disturbing which raised my unexpected costs about another $20.00, that being the cost of a battery for my camera, because although I had just charged my battery the day I left home, apparently it is not doing so well, and gave me perhaps a half minute’s performance and then promptly died, much to my chagrin. So upon this discovery I resolved to go to one of the many electronic shops around and purchase something immediate that would tell the tale visually of all I hoped to describe in the written form. So, I thought to purchase a new battery but one with a long life, and the funny thing is I had heard my camera the day before seeming to turn itself on and off, and I am not sure if the problem with the battery was its own fault or that of the camera. Anyway, after having done this I then was eventually allowed to board the plane. The trip was okay, nothing special, I sat near an English girl, the seat between us was empty, and she apparently was living in Venice, but had just moved there the month before. We talked briefly and she told me how to get to my hostel. We finally got off, and the passport control was far easier this time in Italy than it had been in Rome. I got off and figured out a way to get from the airport to the main water bus stop in Venice. So, after arriving there and talking to another nice young Australian couple on the way, I got off and found some more American girls who were going to my hostel, and we were trying to figure out the water buses, and took one, but it kicked everyone off at Rialto. This was disappointing. And we had to wait for another bus, and that took about 20 minutes, and then we finally got to the terminal to take a bus from the main island of Venice to Zittulle on the island of Giudecca. We got there a little late, but luckily they were still accepting people, or at least us after we arrived, and we finally checked in, and I went to my room and they to theirs, and oddly enough I did not see them again after that.
When I got up to the male floor of the hostel, I discovered that it was more like a barracks than a hostel, and that I had been slightly spoiled in Rome even though I thought that was a shit hole at the time, but a loving shit hole all the same. I had to sneak in very quietly, although it was quite loud outside and you could hear that very well from the room itself. But the beds were set up such that there was only basically the bed, and a locker, though the lockers were huge. They did not even give me a sheet, and on the bed were only two blankets, which I found to be a bit odd, but I was not complaining, I just wanted a place, even as bad as this, to call home for a couple nights, and relieve my incredibly heavy backpack. About the backpack itself, I made what I now think to be the obtuse decision to wear my old backpack so I could just use it as carry on rather than my new 75 Litre one, even though it would have been far more bearable. Maybe it was better this way, but the problem was I have very little room for anything extra, and barely even the stuff I do have. In sum, I did finally make it there, and would let the great adventure of the city of Venice start (and mostly end) the next day.