Day 4: The Triumphal Arrival, Padova-Venice

As the sun worked its way in between the heavy wooden slats of the blinds, I reached for my watch. It was already 10 o’clock. Noon at the train station 54 km distant wasn’t going to happen. Even rushing it took about an hour to get my few things back together, drink a good stiff espresso expanded to normal size with milk, gulp down a roll with some baloney-ish sausage slices, and once again don my riding shorts and the wool knickers that afforded some decency and extra padding. The Austrians were headed to Venice the next day, and they said they would give me a call early the next morning.
Padova turned out to be a seriously large city. I learned later that it is at least twice the size of Innsbruck, and finding my way out of town on the right road was even more difficult than in Trento. I followed a tame river until the other cyclists and pedestrians petered out and I found myself headed the wrong way next to a four-lane highway. Betsy had warned me that the Italians were bad drivers, and this turned out to be more true in the city than it had been on the roads down out of the highlands. Circling around in an edge shopping district, I had to navigate the labyrinth of Ikea and her brethren. These stores were guarded by huge no-mans-lands of parking lots, and a tangle of communication trenches were formed by the twisting links to the arterial roads. The few plants were scrawny, new, out of place. There were no humans, only their bristling glass and steel transport machines, screaming past, blaring attacks on their horns. I was at war with the cars. I couldn’t ask anyone for directions, because everyone was in a rush, and armored from contact anyway.
By a stroke of good fortune, I glimpsed one of the familiar blue bicycle signs, my own personel “blaue Blume” that were always leading me onward. This took me to a pedestrian and bicycle bridge spanning an otherwise insurmountable “Autostrada,” the six-lane Italian autobahn. Oddly, the bike path ended just after the bridge, but at least now I was outside the city. Following near the train tracks I found my way to the countryside, and one again was riding next to a verge of tall grass, past homes and trees and fields. I could relax. There was still an escape to be found from that mall-like anti-landscape. Soon, I met with Highway 11; the road that my map promised would lead me to Venice. After the first town, I saw the confirmation: Venezia 32. Closer than expected.
Soon, the towns began to boast Villas, markets, hotels. I had entered the Venetian Sphere of Tourist Influence. A still river on my right slowly revealed itself as a canal, complete with drawbridges, barberpost hitching poles, and a tourist boat. An old man saw me reading my map and seemingly asked where I was going. “Si, Venezia” he nodded, pointing with a frail hand down the road, and then tottered off. I pushed myself, wanting to arrive, wanting to find my American friends, wanting a shower and lunch and the fulfillment of my journey.
But slowly, the architecture began to change again. Not into the old Byzantine patterns of Venice, but into the huge steel and smokestack fragmentation of an industrial port. Still the signs were pointing to Venice. Then after several miles the signs to Venice vanished, except for one that said “Boat” along with three other languages terms for that mode of transport. I arrived at a t-intersection, and had the choice of “Malcontenta/Venezia Boat” or “Mestre,” which I knew had a bridge to Venice, but I was told I would have to take the train from there. Being ever the romantic, I decided on the boat.
Five level, breezy, hot, tired kilometers later, I arrived at what was clearly a ferry terminal. A KOA style campground filled the landward side of the view, while the sea stretched off to a horizon on my right. A row of cafes on piers beckoned, and the lap of waves agains stones drifted up evenly. I rode to the end of the wharf, and through the gauzy sea air the cupolas, domes, and towers of Venice rose on the horizon. There, just beyond that short bay, lay the city of power, beauty, intrigue, decadence, and decay that had captured so many imaginations. It beckoned, unclear, near but mysterious in the afternoon heat. And I was going to arrive in the same manner as those first Venetians who had retreated to their lagoon in the first place, by boat. The schedule said a boat left in one hour. I went to buy a ticket.
Behind the ticket counter, the girl smiled, was about to give print me the ticket. “The bicyle doesn’t cost extra, right?” She looked at me, and in solid English replied, “You can’t take the bicycle.”
I was stunned. “Why not?”
“There is no place on the boat, you must lock it here.”
“There’s no way?”
“You don’t need it in Venice anyway.”
“But I came so far! And I am not going back this way!”
“Well, then you have to go back to Malcontenta, then back to Mestre, and over the bridge.”
“Can’t I take it apart or something? The ferry goes right to San Marco!”
“I am sorry, but I can do nothing.”
I looked at her, and she at me. It wasn’t up to her. And I didn’t have the wiles to know how to get her to let me take the bike. It looked like I was going to have to ride for another hour. I decided I had to take my licks.
“Well, thank you,” I said with a sigh, and remounted me bike. Malcontenta. What a fitting name for this little dead end.
“Good luck!” she yelled after me. I waved, and was off down the road, passing other cyclists who obviously weren’t going to Venice, but just out for their afternoon exercise. I worked my way back through the industry, into a town, and finally, onto a long, high overpass, luckily with a pedestrian sidewalk. Then I was lost. I asked a woman in a newsstand how to ride to Venice, and she claimed I could catch the train somewhere named, “Santa Lucia.” All I had to do was ride on the freeway for a half-mile. Then I would have a bike route again. I wasn’t too keen on the idea, seeing as the freeway only had a shoulder roughly two meters wide, and the trucks were often right on the while lines. But then, I had come this far, and I wasn’t going to turn back now. I pedaled off, my shoulder almost against the guardrail, terrified the whole time. I was alert to every sound, every bit of motion around me. I crossed an on ramp just in time, and a low sports car roared around the corner and swung past me by mere feet.
I looked up, and suddenly, I saw a break in the guardrail. I took it, looked down the bike path that now stretched ahead and saw the bridge. Perched at the end, low and still hazy, was a huge dome. Venice was at the end of the bridge.
Gulls and long thin barges crisscrossed the bay. I was the only person on the bridge. I rode as quickly as I dared between the balustrades. I came to the end of the bridge. I turned a corner, saw buses disgorging tourists. I went through a passage. A wide walkway, a tall stepped bridge, and rows of buildings seemingly rising from the water took me aback. I was standing at the Grand Canal.