Venice

Left Ljubljana at about 8:40, having bought groceries. Oh, should have mentioned the Slovenian wine, made by Dolfo in Kakovostno, a 2002 Cabernet Sauvignon. Quite good for one of these cold climate places. Snow had fallen last night, took some photos from the car. No border formalities - very different from the Hungary/Croatia and Croatia/Slovenia borders. Did have to pay motorway tolls in various places though.

Since it's a working day, called Budget and Opel about the oil light that was coming on in the car. It wasn't the red light, only the yellow one. The book indicated (in what German I could understand) that it was only a warning, not an urgent problem. We'd checked the oil when it came on yesterday, and the level was exactly half way between minimum and maximum. And the light only came on after driving a couple of hours. They didn't offer any advice - only wanted to inspect the car. So we had to wait until we were parked, so that they could call the Italian auto club. Eventually, we made it to Venice, and arranged to have the auto club come. We made arrangements for contacting/meeting, and the girls went off with the camera, while I waited with the car to meet the mechanicco. Nobody in the car parks spoke any more English than was functionally necessary for 95% of their job, and my Italian was worse (verging on non-existent!), so it was a little disastrous. I moved from an expensive carpark to a cheaper one.

Eventually, the mechanic arrived. When he found that the car didn't have a flat battery, and could be started, he was surprised, but asked me to fetch it (from upstairs in the car park). My worst thoughts were realised when he motioned for me to drive the car onto his tow-truck. We drove to the nearest Opel dealer - about 10km back onto the mainland. We arrived at about 12:20, and it became apparent that the service department only opened after lunch at 2pm. So I had the pleasure of spending my Venetian lunch hour sitting in the car in a car yard, reading a book. Eventually, I found my way into the service area. Of course, none of them spoke English either. After much motioning, pointing to pictures in the book, and attempting to get people to understand foreign languages, and the service people finding an equivalent chapter in an Italian book, they convinced me that it wasn't a problem with the oil, but a problem with the sensor. So I should just keep driving. So then I had the opportunity to navigate myself (with the satnav!) back to Venice. I guess it's better to check these things out, but it felt like a big waste of four daylight hours.

So Joanna, the girls, and the camera took the bus-boat to Piazza San Marco, and went exploring through the streets(?) and gelateria while they waited. Eventually we found each other amongst the crowds in the square. We took a boat out to the San Giorgio Maggiore church, and then the lift up the tower, from where we could look back at the main Venice island. It was very pleasant, especially with the snowcapped Dolomiti in the (distant) background. I've got a 10-image stitch, but it's too big for the blog.