Venice (Yesterday)

A lawn mover shop would do miserably in this city! No dirt or grass anywhere. A mecca for doorbell ditchers everywhere and lots of small stray dogs. We only saw one cat...and it had a collar so it wasn't a stray.

(Was proof-reading and that opening paragraph sounded kind of negative. It's not meant to...just observations. Venice is a beautiful, charming town that I'm blessed to get to visit but don't have to live in.)

Flew from Catania to Venice. Arrived at the Marco Polo Airport around 3:00 pm and rode the Venzia Express bus into Venice (only €3 each). Walked to the boat and bought a one-way ticket down the Grand Canal. Got off at the third stop and wandered around for about half an hour looking for our hotel. Difficult to find, but it's really a nice place and we didn't have trouble finding it once we knew right where it was!

Rushed back to the canal and hopped back on Line 1. The boat goes all the way from the main train station to St. Mark's Square. We did the Rick Steves Grand Canal Cruise of Venice. Downloaded the mp3 off his website and followed along with the guide book. The Rick Steves tours are pretty good and his guide books are invaluable.

At St. Marks Square we did a couple tracks of the audio tour and then headed out to find the Hard Rock Cafe. The store is open but the restaraunt is still closed. They won't open for food service for a couple weeks. We bought two new pins.

Started wandering back towards the hotel while looking in the shops. Carnivale is in a few weeks and the stores are stocked with masks. Saw a few we may pick up when we go back next week.

Stopped at a trattoria for dinner - good food and low priced. Don't remember the name.

The whole town looks mucher bigger on the map that it really is. It's deciving to look at a map of the city and see how far you need to walk - but it only turns out to be about 30 minutes.

The hotel was very nice and we would recommend it. Good breakfast and sattelite TV - not that we were in the room long enough to watch much TV. No internet, though. It's in the old Jewish quarter called the Ghetto. Nice ghetto. It's in a residential area so it's kind of neat to see all the homes and locals walking around.

Ciao,
Bud