New vessel plying Venetian waterways
T H E A R I Z ONA R E P U B L I C
S U N D AY , MAY 12 , 2 013
VENICE — For Kathy Selvaggio, 62, of Valencia, Calif., and several dozen other travelers, it is a night to remember.
Entering Venice’s centuries-old St. Mark’s Basilica through a side door, they shuffle down the main aisle in near-darkness, taking seats near the altar. It is hours after closing time and the cavernous icon of Venetian wealth and power is empty, its lights turned off.
Moments later, a bank of lights above the altar kicks on, revealing the glittering golden dome of mosaics above the raised tomb of St. Mark. Then another bank of lights switches on, and another, and soon the the enormous church and its many treasures — from its tessellated marble floors to its gold- and gem-covered altarpiece — are glowing.
“The fact that it was opened just for us makes it special,” Selvaggio says as she gazes across the Byzantine masterpiece’s mosaicencrusted walls. “We’re getting the chance to really explore it, and I think that’s unusual.”
It’s not the only unusual thing about this tour. As the evening ends, a guide leads Selvaggio and her companions to water taxis for a quick trip back to their accommodations. They are not in a hotel or one of the giant cruise ships docked at the Venice maritime station, but a small river ship tied up along a nearby waterway: Uniworld’s River Countess.
In April, Uniworld became the first U.S.-based river-cruise line to own and operate a vessel in Italy. The 134-passenger River Countess sails from Venice on seven-night itineraries that include several nights on the nearby Po River, the longest in Italy.
For frequent river cruisers such as Canadian Susan Schmidlin, 69, of Edmonton, Alberta, the itinerary offers a much-awaited new way to explore Europe by river ship.
“Venice always has been on my bucket list,” says Schmidlin, chatting in the River Countess’ glasswalled Il Castillo Lounge as the vessel glides down the palazzo-lined Guidecca Canal on the way to the Po. After Uniworld voyages on the Rhine, Danube and Volga rivers, “I was excited to see Italy on the schedule.”
The new trip represents a gamble of sorts for Uniworld, one of North America’s largest river-cruise operators. A boom in river cruising in recent years has created strong demand for new itineraries. But the major river-cruise compa-
Now that it has its own ship on the Po, Uniworld is offering a shorter itinerary that avoids the stretches of the river most prone to problems. Instead of sailing all the way to Cremona, the River Countess travels only as far as Polesella, a small town 40 miles from the waterway’s mouth.
The result is a schedule that includes just a small amount of river cruising and, to the frustration of some passengers, several lengthy bus rides to get them from the accessible part of the Po to the region’s most interesting towns, including Ravenna, Bologna and Verona.
“I’d like to see more places where you could walk right into town from the boat,” says Joe Congemi, 73, of Staten Island, N.Y., a frequent river cruis-