Milano-Cortina 2026 Winter Olympic Games - Olympic Day 16 (Cortina to Venice)

February 22

Moving day again in Italy. We've got a 10:30 AM bus back to the Ponte nella Alpi - Polpet train station. We get up and have a quick breakfast. We packed the night before leaving us about an hour before we have to walk down to the bus terminal. Steve decides to take one more walk through town and see if he can trade some pins. It is another beautiful morning in Cortina:

But as you can see, there are very few people up and about on a Sunday morning except for the German bobsleigh fans who are on their way to the sliding center to see Johannes Lochner win the gold medal in 4-man bobsleigh. He manages to give away two of his last five giveaway pins but is not able to add anything to his collection.

The bus ride goes better than before. The driver already has the storage compartment open, and we are able to store our suitcases there after a little rearrangement. We notice that one of the other things in the compartment is a curling broom and remember that the men's tournament ended last night with Canada beating Great Britain 9-6, much to the dismay of the Scottish spectators.

It takes less time to get down the mountain than it took to go up so we get to the Ponte nella Alpi - Polpet station with about 40 minutes to wait before our train to Venice. When the train arrives, we try to store our bags where the bikes go, but someone beat us to it, and we have to drag our suitcases up one set of stairs to find a place to put the bags. On the 90-minute train ride, Steve tries to grab a few pictures that show the changes in the countryside as we head toward Venice:

On our way to Cortina, we changed trains at the Venice - Mestre which is on the mainland. This time, we stay on the train and ride across a long causeway to the Venice - Santa Lucia train station which is right on the grand canal. We were not quite prepared for what a tourist trap this part of Venice is. We see gondoliers hawking rides on their boats along with a lot of porters looking for clients. It is only later that we realize that the process of getting your suitcases from the train station to your hotel may require rolling them along cobblestones and over multiple bridges. Hiring a porter does not seem like such a crazy idea in that case. Fortunately for us, our hotel is only about 100 yards from the train station. We make our way up a narrow alleyway, and we can tell we are off the beaten path as the only people walking here appear to be locals. While a lot of the businesses and hotels along the alleyway look quite seedy, our hotel, The Venice Times, does not (photos courtesy of The Venice Times):

This is another boutique hotel with only 27 rooms. Most importantly, it is great to have a queen-sized bed after more than a week sleeping on a single and a trundle bed! We've got 2-3 hrs until dinner so we decide to walk around and see how far we have to go before we get away from the tourists. Beth suggests that we try to find this historic Jewish section of Venice. Most of the foot traffic is headed to either the Realto shopping district or to San Marco square and again, we can tell immediately when we have turned off the main route. We never do find the Jewish section, but we do get some pictures of what the "real" parts of Venice look like:

In the upper left of these six pictures, you will see a small floating dock. This is the Venice equivalent of a subway station. There are boats called the Vaporetto that make regularly scheduled trips to similar docks. You buy a single ride ticket or a pass for 24, 48 or 72 hours that you can use as many times as you want in that period. Except for a tiny piece of Venice near the train station that is used to service the cruise ship port, there are no roads in Venice that are large enough for cars. Everything that you would normally do by car: police, ambulance, FedEx, garbage collection, etc. is done by boat. In the bottom left picture, you see the type of boat that people in Venice would have if they owned a boat and how they park them along the sides of the smaller canals. And you get used to walking over bridges, a lot of bridges!

We find a restaurant that is close to the main tourist route, but just far enough off that the prices look reasonable. Because we prefer to eat early, we are the only ones in the restaurant and the waiter is happy to give us a table in the front window so he can show other potential diners that yes, there are people eating here. We are pretty pizza'd out from our stay in Cortina, so Beth goes for clams and spaghetti and Steve goes for a porcini mushroom ravioli. On our walk back to the hotel, we have gelato at one of the dozen or so gelaterias that we passed.

We try to watch some of the Closing Ceremonies, but it was honestly difficult to figure out what was going on in Italian. Fortunately, we've got it recorded at home so we can better appreciate it. We thought that it was interesting that they had to light an Olympic cauldron in Verona in order to extinguish it - one of the consequences of these very spread-out Games. We enjoyed the handoff to the French Alps for the 2030 Winter Olympics and Steve vows to work hard enough on his French over the next four years that he can actually have conversations in French.

This is as good a place as any to discuss our thoughts on the 2026 Winter Olympics. On the plus side, we loved the Olympic vibe in Cortina. We saw outstanding performances in almost every event we watched, highlighted by Franchesca Lollobrigida's win in the women's 3000m long-track speed skating.  We had been worried that being Americans would be a problem, but all of our interactions with both spectators and the general public were very positive. We felt welcomed no matter where we went. The venues themselves were good enough - not great, but good enough to not detract from the performances. On the negative side, the organizers managed to figure out a way to make one of Italy's greatest strengths, their food, a weakness at the venues where the food was generally terrible. The spread-out nature of these Games was also a big problem. It was hard to get to the other venues and while the transportation options were generally okay once you found them, it was often not clear how to get from point A to point B. Probably the biggest short-coming for us was the complete lack of Olympic vibe in Milano. You could walk around in many areas of the city and have no idea that the Games were even taking place. We think that this was due to lack of buy-in from the Italian public with most deciding that the costs of tickets were too high. The organizers should have done more to make it possible for most Italians to afford attending at least one event and get some Olympic spirit. With all this said, we'd rate these Olympics somewhere in the middle of the pack compared to the other 14 we've attended. Not horrible but could have been much better.

Tomorrow, we have tickets to visit Saint Mark's basilica and the Doge palace. Enjoy!