Day 1 in Venice

Saturday in Venice

After the usual before travel panic we were on the bus and headed for the airport. Shayna and her mom got there an hour and a half early, just in case. We were late because of the traffic they were worried about running into.
We had a nice lunch at the airport and boarded our plane for Philadelphia.
We did some walking and hanging out in the lounge and soon it was time to board the magic carpet to Venice.
Shayna and I sat together and Neal sat a couple of rows behind us. The flight seemed to last forever and the food was not very good at all. Flying is just not fun any more. Maybe it was never quite fun.
We had no checked bags and immigration was nothing. We did not even have landing cards. We bought tickets for the boat to Venice and our 7 day vaporetto passes. Next it was the long hot walk to the boat.
Once we got on the boat we were cooled by the lovely Italian breeze and whisked to the beautiful city of Venice.
The people next to me were having a conversation slipping flawlessly from Italian to English in mid sentence. I was so jealous.
We were the second from the last stop and shortly after arriving, our land lady showed up to walk us to our Venice home.
This city is just like I imagined it. Narrow winding streets interrupted by lovely bridges crossing canals and light bouncing off everything reflected by the ever present water. Yes, there are no cars at all.

Our home here is gorgeous. It is much more than I dared to expect. We do have a terrace over looking a small, quiet canal. We have two lovely bedrooms and a full although small kitchen. Shayna was feeling a little ill from the trip so she napped while Neal and I went and had our first Italian meal. It was almost time for places to close but we had a nice lunch and a couple of drinks and then went to the market and bought a few things.
We returned home for a nap and now Shayna and I are sitting here with the shutters open and enjoying the world.
Once Neal gets up we will talk about our evening plans.
We left around 6:00 to start our first evening of wandering. Our first stop was for a slice of pizza appetizer. These pizza slices were absolutely huge. I would not say it was the best pizza I ever had but it was certainly the biggest single slice. We sat on a bench outside and ate it and then continued wandering. I can’t quite say where we ended up but we had a lovely dinner overlooking the water. We saw a large group of boats that looked like they were going to a wedding. One was covered in flowers and I think we counted 10 other boats with people wearing tuxes and lovely dresses. This boat thing is really very cool. Later we saw what looked like a large private party on a big yacht having quite a wild time.
Our dinner was great. After pizza slices we were not too hungry so we all ordered what were basically starters. I had a green bean salad with three huge shrimps, eyes and all. It was garnished with pine nuts and red currants. I am going to get lots of food ideas here. We drank spritzes which are a big local drink and delicious. We sat at dinner for a couple of hours until it was dark and then headed for home?
We did our obligatory getting lost. The big issue was that it was totally dark so we did not learn a thing. We wandered and wandered. We certainly were off the beaten path. We could go for a long time without seeing anyone else. It is not like there are street signs although they would not have meant much to us. Also there are not many street lights. Oh, but, there are lots of bridges with lots of steps and they all look alike other than some are higher and have more steps. The good news is we felt perfectly safe. Eventually we found a restaurant and asked for help. We were only ten minutes from home but headed in the wrong direction. Of course the person could speak enough English to get us straightened out and soon we were home.
I am sure there will be lots of getting lost in our future. Fortunately, as long as our feet hold up we can think of it as an adventure that gets us more steps.
It was good to get home and fall into bed.
We are really enjoying our time with Shayna.

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