Drivin' Adair by Bimmer 09: Last Vaparetto ride

Some cruises beginning in Venice start with an overnight spent on the ship. This is your hotel room for the night. Boarding hours for the ship were 1 pm to 9 pm on Saturday September 20 so if you were an early arrival you could board and then spend the rest of the day exploring Venice, returning to the ship at meal times if you wanted to save money. That's an option but not one that would have appealed to us as we wanted to enjoy the Venice experience while we could. We had almost a full week ahead to enjoy the ship.

The ship was due to sail at 1 pm on the second day of the cruise so we still had Sunday morning to see more of Venice. As suite passengers we took our breakfast in Sabatini's Italian Restaurant. Breakfast here is a perk for Suite passengers only so there are never more than 3 or 4 tables occupied and there are at least 3 servers. It has it's own menu and kitchen and is a wonderful calm way to start your day with a filling breakfast.

Our goal after breakfast was to avoid St Mark's Square and crowds wherever they might gather so we took a nearby Vaparetto (S Basilio station) across the Guideca canal to the San Giorgio station where there was a fine looking church and some views of St Mark's at a safe distance. We could see across the water that the Square was a mass of people taking advantage of the sunshine.

We had to attend a Safety Muster make-up session in the Tahitian Lounge at 10.45 a.m as we had missed the full Muster Drill the day before due to joining the ship late. This is where you are shown how to put your lifejackets on and is a worthwhile possible life-saving exercise required by law...something they hadn't done when the Costa Concordia sank in January 2012. Princess is very safety-concious which is fine by me!

This is the Costa Magica coming into port as we were sitting on our balcony before going to breakfast. All the big ships usually have the help of a tug, attached at the stern, to act as a brake if there was an engine failure which would allow the ship to drift in such narrow waters. Magica carries 3500 passengers vs the 680 on the Ocean Princess. She has however only 3 times the interior volume (which is expressed in Gross Tonnes)

Once breakfast at Sabatini's and the make-up Muster Drill was over we were free to go ashore for a quick trip across the Guideca Canal via Vaparetto.

St. Mark's Square and the Doge's Palace seen from San Giorgio

There was a golden art exhibit at S. Giorgio.

Nearby a newly-married couple were posing for friends taking photographs.

People strolling by the marina

We only had 30 minutes or so at S. Giorgio but it was nice to get off the ship and see another part of Venice. Our Vaparetto pass had expired late last night so I bought our tickets on the boat. The person who operates the gates and ties the boat up when docked is the one you see if you need to buy tickets which you pay in cash so have some Euros ready when you board.

We were soon back on the water and heading back towards San Basilio...