Saturday, January 25, 2014

The Island of Lido

Emily and I made our first trip to Lido today. We were told to watch the sunset there and that when it gets warmer to go to the beach.

We left Casa Artom and made our way to the vaporetto stop at the Salute Church. On the way there we saw the vaporetto coming and had to sprint to make it on time. We fumbled for our IMOB cards and barely made it on. It was a little windy out but sunny.



When we arrived to Lido, it was nothing what we expected. Where was the beach? It was like a mini-Venice, with cars. Fiats and smart cars everywhere. We turned right out of the vaporetto station and started running along the water. We looked down every alley, but still, no beach. We stopped a couple women asking, Dov' la playa (hoping our spanish was close enough to the Italian word for beach). They didn't understand us. Finally, a man with a missing finger standing on a corner was able to point us in the right direction. "Spiaggia" is beach by the way. Not "playa." We had joked about the beach being on the other side of the island when we first arrived. It turns out we were actually correct. So we cut across and followed a little trail to a huge sand dune. We climbed up it and finally realized what the big deal about Lido was.

Every 100 feet or so there are these rock levees that lead out to a dock. We had to be careful since they must have taken down the boardwalks during high tide.

We ran along the beach for a little while before climbing back over the sand dune and continuing on the rest of our run. Emily is training for a marathon so our goal was 8 miles but we only did about 7 due to stopping to climb up on the docks.

 We ran around the other side of the island, passing little huts that we think may be shops in the summer. We decided to try to find the main street we started on and get back to the vaporetto station to check departure times. The next departure was at 4:40 and we wanted to wait for sunset so we ran past a little farther to the cafe we passed when we first started.
The sun was just starting to set when we looked at our clock and decided to head back to the station.



The vaporetto ride on the way back gave us the most beautiful view. The sun was setting and the sky turned a beautiful golden color. We sat in the back of the boat to maximize our picture taking abilities, especially since I had to make due with my 4th generation iPod touch.



The Italian flag on the back of the boat was not cooperating with the wind, but after a couple (okay, several) tries, we managed to get a semi-decent one.
We have decided to do all of our long runs on this beautiful island, since the vaporetto ride is only a little more than 1 euro each way.

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