Venice Round 2

We make our way out of the ships terminal and within 100m is the water taxi's temporary cruise ship office and a line of 5 people in front of us. To the other side a line of several hundred people all still heading to the water front for a vaparetto opportunity and all dragging loads of cases. After last weeks vaparetto experience even with out the cases these little black ducks were not going there again. We paid our little man the 80€ in "cash" that was required and within a minute and past all the rest of the crowds a private car whisked in and picked us and our luggage up for the 5 min drive to the waterfront, past still many many more people on foot dragging way to many cases. We are given a receipt and told to look out for water taxi no. 9 and within a minute out in the middle of what looked like the inside of a upright washing machine with little toy boats in it is the water taxi guy with a big sign no. 9 on it. The man at the dock calls out at the top of his voice water taxi no.9, with my returned voice over the many people waiting in a mess of luggage everywhere in front of us a very hearty Aussie voice yelled back "That Will Be Us" to the look of amazement from the other people in line, how did you organise that so quick! The crowd parted like the Red Sea and we make our way through feeling like royalty to the edge of the docks and now more pleased with our € investment. The water is so rough with the reaving and jostling of all the other water taxi waiting to pick up lucky people from the cue, but have to give way to the pre booked people, is, now becoming more and more pleased with our € spending. We are helped on to the pristine timber stretch limo style of water taxi with it's white padded leather seats while some one attends to the luggage. As we bend in half to take a seat at the back of the boat, our driver with the whole sexy italian boating thing going on, I'm telling you by the looks of him they don't employ the ugly ones to drive these water taxi! He looks around and with a big smile and a "hold on" we start to reverse out of the dock with what sounds like an engine that would be big enough to fly us to the moon. We flip round, out of reverse and into a forward motion with the back of the boat dipping well into the water, the white wash pouring out the back and I'm starting to feel like we are in a getaway scene from a James Bond movie with the Grand Canal and Venice in the distance as the setting. Once again our driver looking behind to make sure we are still in one piece and then we really speed off. The 1st section of trip takes about 10mins full spread and the last 10mins at a slower pace as we weave up some of the smaller canals, so it's up and to the front to take some pictures. We travel under some very low bridges and I have to duck on the odd occasion, we come out the other side and into the Grand Canal and arrive at a little timber dock where we and our luggage are helped off, it was so cool I felt like a movie star and the best 80€ I've ever spent.