We tried to feel sentimental about leaving Italy, but could not find it in ourselves to do so. Italy was beautiful, but we were going to Austria – the land of Mozart and “The Sound of Music”! (Both came later, though, because we went to Vienna before Salzburg.)
With our Eurail passes, we did not need to book trains everywhere we went, but the train-schedule we received with our passes was outdated. Our plans of taking a night-train to Paris from Amsterdam fell through because we discovered there was no night-train from Amsterdam to Paris. Even so, the Eurail pass was a boon. In Europe, with so few people travelling compared to in India, we did not need to reserve on most trains. Our passes served as tickets, so we just had to hop on and find unreserved seats. The unreserved seats, needless to say, are nothing like the horrifying general compartment we see here.
We walked all over the main island, saw the Rialto, sat by the canals. Venice is a highly touristic place, which means that even churches often have an entry fee. We thought of going to the famous Piazza San Marco, but we had checked out of the hostel, and, with bags on our backs, we did not want to walk that much. Buses were expensive too; we just took in the Venetian air and relaxed.
We did some forward thinking and found out about hostels in Vienna and then we said goodbye to Italy and then took the most wonderful train journey of our lives …
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