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May 31, 2007
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A Random Walk through Venice

A Random Walk through Venice

In Venice you can get lost very easily, but not for long. There are signs everywhere point you toward to major landmarks, the Rialto Bridge and St. Mark’s Square.

After a small breakfast in our hotel we set out to take the tour of the Grand Canal. From the St. Romana Vaporetto stop we listened to the National Geographic tour of the canal as we headed around the S curve toward St. Marks. It is hard to follow as all the buildings along the canal are similar in many ways.

After we finished to tour we walked around St. Marks for a while. Josh wanted to spend one euro to buy some corn to get the pigeons to perch on his arms. I would not let him as they are so dirty and gross. We were supposed to meet up with Ulring’s outside their hotel we waited for a while before leaving a note that we were headed to lunch. We just missed them by a couple minutes.

We had a delicious lunch at one of the places recommended by our hotel manager. Jane had ravioli, I had gnocchi, Josh had tortellini soup and Kaia had spaghetti and meatballs. Jane and I also had a small pitcher of prosecco, which turned out to be a sparkling wine. It was all very good, but the cost was a surprising 63 euros. Each of our lunches on the menu listed for about 7 euros but they charged more since we were having them as our only course.

About halfway through lunch the Ulrings caught up with us and sat down to eat as well. So we added dessert, which was very good. We split an order of Tirimisu and an icream truffle. The truffle tasted like a layer of angel food cake wrapped around a core of mocha ice cream.

After lunch we just started walking around parts of venice we had not explored yet. We didn’t know where we were going or what we were headed toward but it was fun and we saw a lot of interesting shops and lots of interesting people.

We made two stops for snacks during the afternoon. One for gelato and one for pizza and a sit down. The pizza place was good and it was fairly close to our hotel. It looked like rain so we stopped to pick up umbrellas and rain gear. We asked if we could sit in the lobby of our hotel and play cards but we were told that the tables were for breakfast only and playing cards there was not possible. So we decided to walk toward the Londra Palace. About halfway there it started to rain pretty hard. But with our Umbrellas in hand we kept going.

When we arrived at Londra Palace we were all wet, but just minutes after we sat down in the lobby the skies opened up and it POURED. So we ordered a couple bottles of wine and played some five hundred. Jim and I soundly beat the women three games to one, even though I had really crappy cards again.

Over cards we looked at the really expensive menu for the hotel and decided to go elsewhere unless it was really raining. Since it was clearing up we headed out to find something. We ended up at what turned out to be a really bad restaurant. Everything was very forgettable and my crab must have come from a can. As we say, every vacation must have a worst restaurant. We thought it was L’Arche (the french version of an Oasis on the tollway) but I think this was worse.