Venice

July 23-Day 23

We are in Venice, yes we are.We arrived by train yesterday, left our packs at the check baggage for the day and started exploring. We love it. Dean thought he wouldn’t be he loves it also. We walked around the canals and bridges yesterday till late afternoon and decided to head out and look for our hostel. We collected our bags and checked our directions that I had printed up before we left. Venice was one of the places that we were told to pre-book. So I found the only hostel a month or so ago that had room. So we read the instructions, jumped on a bus and off we went. It sounds easy when I say it like that. It was acually a huge pain in the butt. But how can I complain when we are in VENICE. O.K. so I won’t complain but, it was a really hard day. When we got to the town where the directions said to get off, we had to walk ½ a mile yet. When we finally got there, the host wasn’t there. There was a family from Sweden staying there and they borrowed us the phone to phone the lady. They then proceded to tell us that there was not kitchen access, nor was there a store or resteraunt within walking distance. We hadn’t prepared for that at all. We thought we would get to the hostel and either pick up some food or go for dinner. NOT. We were hungry, tired and grumpy. What to do? I think the Swedish couple could see it was going to get ugly, or something. They had just finished up their dinner and offered us some salami, bread, wine and fruit. Just then I remembered we had a package of microwave rice and chicken and there was a microwave so we were set. Whew, that was close. We decided that we would not be staying the 2 nights we had pre-booked and would take our bags and figure out some other place to stay for the next night.
Day 2 in Venice. We ate the included bread and jam for breakfast and walked the ½ mile back to the bus stop and now we are back in Venice. First things first we again dropped our bags at the bus station baggage check and thought we would wing it and see what rooms would run us right in Venice. We walked a little way and saw a little hotel called Dollerama, or something close. We though, it looked good and inquired about the price and surprise, surprise it is only $100. Well, Euro, but from what we had heard that is a steal. Also, we have no other plan for tonight, so the Dollerama it is. Now we can relax and start the tour.
We started by going to San Paulo square where we had a quick lunch of pizza and water. We had read in the |Rick Steves travel book that if you checked your backpack or bag you could get to the front of the line into the bacillica. It worked. We did the walk through and it is another very nice church. Then we toured the Doge’s palace and the bridge of sighs and the prison. That was our favorite tour. We haven’t seen an old prison yet and it also included a museum of the old armory. They had many pieces still in excellent shape. The collection included swords, cross bows, cannons, guns, pistols, suits of armor, shield, lances, spears and pikes. The palace was full of paintings and old furniture. It was amazing.
We were DONE around 5 o’clock and still had to walk back, collect our packs, shop for supper (roast chicken, salad, cucumbers, peppers, focaccia bread and fruit) and check into our hotel. We have doen that, finished our supper and are sitting on the terrace overlooking the cannal, drinking wine, sketching the old buildings, writing in our journals listening to the church bells ring and reading. Ahh… life is good right now. Oh, and the gondolas are floating by below us to give us some music and something to entertain us. It’s funny, as we are looking out over the gondolas floating by the tourists are taking pictures of us on the terrace and waving. Very fun.