Venice

In our last night in Florence we had a great dinner at Ginono's, a little restaurant on a side alley between Il Duomo and the Uffezi museum. We had a plate of ussoco alla fientori (?) and a plate of the house pasta with mushrooms and truffles along with Chianti and beer, all for 31 euros.

We caught the 8:30 train and were here by 10:30. Our hotel, Albergo Marin, is just across the Grand Canal and up a couple of side streets from the train station. Very handy.

Venice is on a few small islands out in the Adriatic Sea. Apparently in the 5th century some of the people in the area were fleeing from Attila the Hun who was on his way to Rome and decided to come out here and live in stilt houses in the swamps, out of the way. Eventually this became a city. There is one bridge out here from the mainland which the trains and buses cross. As soon as they get to the island, that's it for wheeled motorized transportation. All of the "roads" are pedestrian walkways from about 3' to 20' wide. All other transportation is by the Grand Canal and hundreds of smaller canals. Everything goes by boat - people, food, garbage, funeral hearses (we saw a funeral go by), ambulances, construction materials - absolutely everything. The canals are filled with boat and gondola traffic. The gondolas sound romantic but are very expensive and are fighting for space with taxi boats, water buses, garbage barges and everything else. It's also really expensive to rent a gondola for an hour. We decided to walk.

There is no shoreline as we think of it. It's either a pedestrian walkway or building right to the water everywhere. At St Mark's Square especially, there's less than a metre between the sea and the walkway. This can't last. Between the city slowly subsiding (I think I've read) and climate change, this place is doomed.

We've walked all around it yesterday and today. It's impossible to follow a map. We've even seen people with GPS systems wandering around wondering where they are and how they'll get where they want to go.There are hundreds of canals, bridges and little pedestrian walkways. Many of them are dead ends or the names change every few blocks. Plus there are only 4 bridges that cross the Grand Canal which snakes through the whole city. You just have to keep walking until you see one of the few signs that point toward a significant landmark or one of the main bridges. We actually found our way around without a whole lot of trouble but it is a maze. We even found the Madigans' Pub - we didn't see Gerard and Lisa though. You see lots of people standing staring at maps (as we have) totally perplexed. You also see many people arriving with their luggage at hotels and saying "Thank God". It's really hot and every bridge has steps up and steps down and most people have wheeled luggage (and too much of that).

Anyway, yesterday we wandered into some square and found a step to sit and have our picnic lunch. The other thing you see is lots of people looking hot, tired, hungry and frustrated trying to pick restaurants (of which there are thousands). It's much nicer and easier to have your picnic lunch with you plus a lot cheaper. While we ate yesterday a classical trio played Vivaldi for change in the square and an artist from Britain was painting a picture of a church tower right in front of us. Very cool.

Last night dinner wasn't great but we had a nice stroll along the Grand Canal and a few streets. This morning we went down to the grocery store and bought lunch items and then walked up to St Mark's Square, the most famous place in Venice. It was nice but very crowded. The lineup for the basilica and museum was long so we didn't even bother. We did go into a really pretty church on the way. We had a great walk all through the city, pretty much, but were glad to get back to our hotel after about 4 1/2 hours. After a quick shower to cool down we went to a nearby small park for lunch. There are very few parks and really very few places to even sit down in all of Venice. It seemed that we craved seeing some greenery which we have seen very little of in the last 2 weeks.

We have a nice but modest hotel with ensuite bathroom and perfect location. Tomorrow we're looking forward to moving on to Verona.