Venice - Digging It!

Once we arrived in Venice late Friday night the 7th of April, we were very relieved to find our hotel just across the little foot bridge. Being completely dark out, the location of the hotel was not immediately evident, and there was a bit of stress involved as we walked around trying to get our bearings in another new city, in the middle of the night, with no map. We walked into another hotel to get some navigational help and the guy at the front desk was extremely helpful and walked us back outside, and told us exactly where to go, pointing the way. We checked into the Hotel Canal, which as its name suggests is right on the water, and were in bed almost immediately. In the morning, we had to wait a bit for the included breakfast as it seemed everyone in the hotel chose to eat at precisely the same time that we did. It only really took a few minutes and before long, we were seated, happily munching away on our rolls, fruit, cereal, juice and coffees. We got cleaned up, and checked out, leaving our bags at the hotel, and went out to discover the enchantment of Venice. One thing that we still had to take care of was accomodations. The plan was to leave Venice later in the day, and go to Verona, or Milan, or Bologna, depending on where the least expensive accomodations were. We found an Internet cafe, and after about 90 minutes of searching the web, and making phone calls, we finally decided that we'd have to stay in Venice longer, and thus made reservations for a different hotel (since Hotel Canal was already fully booked) outside the city in "Mestre" for 3 nights, and a place in Milan for 2 nights thereafter. With that taken care of, we were ready for some exploring. It was another perfect day weather-wise, and because of that, we did not feel too motivated to go inside of the museums, churches, etc., and instead chose to wander the twisting labrynth of streets, snapping lots of photos and shooting video, and all along the waterfront, and the Piazzo San Marco. Vee suggested a nice lunch outside, and we had a delicous meal. We each had a glass of wine (Vee white, Cliff red), Vee had a pizza with anchovies and olives, and I had the "tourist menu" that included a spaghetti with meat sauce, green salad, fried fish (octopus, squid, little white minnow-sized fishies, baby prawns, and bigger prawns) and an ice cream. We cleaned our plates. It was the first nice sitdown complete meal in a while, and quite a pleasure, and not even very expensive given the spread of food. After lunch we walked around some more and talked about what we wanted to do the next day, Sunday, while ooh-ing and aaah-ing at the beauty of Venice that engulfed us. Rather than make it too late of a night, and since we had no idea how to get to our newly booked hotel, nor where it was, we headed out of the city of Venice in search of our new "home". We figured out that the hotel ought to be pretty close to the train station in Mestre, which we could get to from the train station in Venice via pretty much any train line. We hopped one train, and after a while of sitting there in the near dark, and with no one else on board, not even train conductors, we thought maybe it'd be best to try a different one, even though this was supposed to be the right train. Vee found another one leaving in about two minutes that was on the adjacent track, and so we got on that one and it was fine. Two stops later, we arrived in Mestre, hailed a taxi, and got dropped off at our hotel no problem. Still exhausted from our late night, and prior nights of limited sleep, we crashed. It was about 7:30pm, and we slept until around 10 or so, woke up, couldn't get back to sleep for a while, so I did some laundry and got a bottle of mineral water from the front desk since we were both parched. Finally we fell back asleep, and that was it for our first full day in Venice. As for our initial impressions of Venice, we were both in jaw-dropping awe. The Piazza San Marco is fantastic, and just sooooo grand. You can really feel the history here, and the pride, and the busy-ness, and significance. The water surrounding Venice, and the canals that seep into it, are gorgeous. Of course, it is loaded with tourists, about as bad as Florence, but it just seems to be less of an issue here. We loved looking out across the water, and seeing all of the beautifully designed, extravagent buildings and hearing the sounds of the rippling waters slapping up againsted the terraced rock waterfront. Although Venice has a reputation of being a smelly city, that has not been our experience. I can imagine that in the Summer though, it could get pretty stanky! We were not sure if we were going to come to Venice, but now that we are here, we are so glad that we decided to include it in our travels. We never thought we'd be here for 4 nights, but I am positive that it'll be just fine. There seems to be alot to do and see, certainly much more than what you can do in 3-4 days. --*!##!*-- Sunday, the 9th of April, we had the provided breakfast and listed to all the different languages being spoken in the breakfast room while we woofed down rolls, cake, fruit, yogurt, juice, cereal and tea. Back up in the room, I did a bunch of laundry, Vee worked on our photos and wrote emails, and then I wrote postcards and emails. By late morning we were finished with our "chores" and found out from the guy at the front desk that there was a bus line two blocks away that would get us into Venice for just 1 Eur each, and that it runs every 10 minutes and takes only 15 minutes to get into the city. We were ecstatic!! And sure enough, it really was that easy. Once in Venice, we searched out the same Internet cafe, and sent our emails. Internet cafes charge an arm and a leg here! Heading back towards San Marco square, we shared a slice of pizza and a tasty sweet pastry right out of the oven. Our objective was to find tickets to a live show, and then to find a way to get onto the water for an affordable ride. We found the location we spotted the night before where they were selling tickets to a classical music show later than night, and we bought two tickets. Then, we walked to the Visitors Center, and learned about how to use the "water-bus" system, and bought two 24-hour tickets for that. We found the water-bus stop, and made our way onto the number 82 which took us up the Grand Canal and back around the island of Venice to our original stop. It was alot of fun, and we got to see so much of the city. We had quite a bit of time before the show started, so we tried to get into the Duomo, but we just missed it; they just closed the doors. We wanted to do something, but everything was about to close, so instead, since it was getting a bit chilly with the cloud cover being pretty thick today, we went in search of a cafe, and found a great little place where we had some very nicely done capuccinos and a bunch of pastries. After a while, we warmed up, and headed back out to where the show was going to be. We got there alot faster than we expected, so we continued walking the twisty alleys, hoping to get just enough lost to enjoy the thrill of discovery, but not so lost so as to be late for the show. We got back just in time to be at the front of the line to get in, and got our pick of seats in the 3rd row. Surprisingly, there were very few people there. Maybe because it was Sunday night and alot of the weekend tourists had already left. Anyway, the performance was wonderful. There is nothing like live music, and to be just a few feet from the performers is another thing entirely. It was a quintet, with two violinists, a viola player, a celloist and a stand-up bass player. They played 6 selections, 2 by Mozart, 1 by Rossini, 1 by Mendelssohn, Pachelbel's infamous canon, and a bonus waltz. The performance was inside the Palazzo delle Prigioni, which was apparently an opera house -slash- overflow prison for the palace across the bridge. The sound was beautiful, and we had the best time. I even managed to record Pachelbels Canon on my little MP3 player using the built-in mic and voice recorder. Bootleg anyone? After the show, we were electrified, and wanted to go burn off the energy with a few pints in one of the many pubs we saw earlier in our wanderings. But, we couldn't find a darn one of'm. So rather than drag our search late into the night, we walked the Plaza a bit, marvelling at the look of the lights, and the water, and then took the water-bus to the land-bus station, rode the #12 back to the hotel, got to Peroni's and a bottled water from the front desk, and chilled in our room until about 1am, and then finally fell asleep.