There are good days, and there are bad days. This is one of them.
-- Lawrence Welk
We left Milan and picked up the Autostrada A4 (now also known as E70), anticipating a 3- or 4-hour drive to Venice in our Morris minivan. The plan was to arrive in Venice around noon; park the van and take a vaporetto to the youth hostel we had booked on the island of Giudecca to drop our stuff. Then we would take another vaporetto across to the Piazza San Marco for the afternoon and evening. But the Universe had other plans for us.
Just east of Padua, about 30 miles from Venice, we were rolling along at about 50 mph -- about as fast as the minivan would go with nine people in it -- while car after car went whizzing by in the fast lane with apparently no speed limits. And then . . . the oil pressure gauge on the dashboard started dropping into the danger zone, so we pulled off the highway.
What do we do now? No cell phones. No AAA. So we waited.
I don't remember how it happened, but eventually a tow truck appeared and in broken Italian and English Tom explained the apparent problem. The tow operator hooked us up, and Tom and maybe a couple of others (not me) rode in the truck with the driver while the rest of us hung on for dear life in the minivan.
Next Stop: Dolo
The tow truck took us to a little town called Dolo, barely 15 miles from Venice. So close, and yet so far!
After unhooking us from the truck, the truck driver and a couple of strapping young Italian men pushed the minivan through a narrow passage into a courtyard, where they began to look in the engine compartment and under the van, talking in typical Italian style -- lots of gestures, but earnestly, not conspiratorially.
Eventually, they concluded that the oil pan drain plug had come off and drained all the oil. If we hadn't pulled off the road when we did, it would have caused serious damage to the engine. This was a simple problem to diagnose, but a much harder problem to fix: Where do you get a plug of the right diameter, thread size and pitch for a non-Italian vehicle?
While all this was going on, seemingly out of nowhere (but undoubtedly from one of the buildings surrounding the courtyard) a fiery young woman (think "Carmen") came running toward the men standing near the minivan, screaming and brandishing a large cast-iron skillet. Instantly, one of the men bolted and, after a brief chase around the courtyard, two others disarmed (dis-skilleted?) her and pulled her, literally kicking and screaming, back into a building.
The whole episode probably only lasted a minute, but we were stunned . . . speechless. Once again, we realized we were definitely not in Oklahoma anymore, Toto.
After a while -- I have no recollection of how long it was -- the oil pan plug was replaced and the oil refilled. They fired up the engine and the oil pressure came up and seemed stable. Tom paid them somehow -- I think with American Express checks -- and we got back on the road to Venice.
Next Stop: Venice
By this time it was very late in the afternoon, so our plan of a casual afternoon in Venice had drained away with the engine oil. We parked the minivan outside of town (I think at the railroad station), took a vaporetto ferry to the hostel on Giudecca, and ate dinner there. But we were determined to make the most of our time, so after dinner we caught a vaporetto across to the Piazza San Marco.
The light was fading fast . . .
. . . and by the time we reached the main island, it was almost dark.
The vaporetto dock was over here . . .
. . . and to get to the Piazza San Marco, we had to walk about a hundred yards from the dock to the waterside entry to the Piazza:
As we approached, I heard music . . . orchestral music, live three-dimensional music, not two-dimensional music blasting from loudspeakers. We rounded the corner into the vast open space of the Piazza, and there was a small orchestra, with 15, maybe 20, players with violins, cellos, horns, and woodwinds! And overhead and surrounding the orchestra were strings of lights suspended on poles, with bulbs one or two feet apart. With the music, the lights, the magnificent Piazza . . . I was transported. I watched and listened, and time seemed to vanish. It was truly magical!
As I recall, the orchestra was located about here, with players facing the southern side of the Piazza (on the left in this photo).
So here's the thing:
If we had been able to follow our original plan, and had not had vehicle trouble, we would probably never have seen the orchestra. We would have arrived in time to spend the afternoon, then we would have headed back to the hostel on Giudecca for dinner and called it a day. The Universe works in mysterious, and sometimes wonderful, ways.
One more post about my experience in Venice will follow this one.
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