Wednesday in Venice

Wednesday in Venice

Where is this week going?
We are having too much fun.
Maybe if we stop having fun the time will slow down.
This morning we really did get an early start. We were out of our flat at 8:15. We stopped at a little place for a pastry and coffee. Shayna had ice coffee.
We strolled up to the boat like we lived here all our lives.
I don’t think I have mentioned all the dogs here. They follow their masters politely with no leashes. They are mostly small dogs but there are some larger ones. They are everywhere and really sweet. People really clean up after them. There is no grass anywhere.
Oh, I forgot to mention that today we took our trash down to leave for the trash boat. Yes, there is a trash boat that comes every morning.
We grabbed the boat to St. Mark’s Square and headed for the Doges Palace. We needed to get there as close as possible to when it opened to avoid the crowd. We have only needed to by a student ticket for Shayna and Neal and I have been getting into places for free. This is actually quite a savings.
We spent about an hour and a have wandering through the palace and the prisons. This palace is where the Doges lived and the government conducted all its business. The Doge was elected from a group of fellow wealthy blue bloods. I guess they were golden bookers since they had to have their family histories in the famous golden book. Since this city was built on trade, these families were mostly merchants who had their homes on the Grand Canal. The lowest floor was the warehouse for their trade. The palace is decorated with paintings by the most famous Venice painters.
It must be 7:30 pm. All the church bells are ringing. I am sitting in the living room with a glass of prosecco and the terrace door wide open. A vacation like this helps me learn how to improve my life at home. I should be taking a glass of wine down to the lake every evening and enjoying where I live.
Shayna is in the shower and Neal is still asleep. In an hour or so, we will be heading out for dinner.
Back to our day.
After leaving the palace we did our best to get out of the crowded square. This is no place to be in the middle of the day although night there is really special. I may suggest we head that way for dinner tonight.
We looked in some very expensive shops. I saw a dress I loved for $4,000. It was fun to touch and think of as art.
We had a lovely lunch in a sweet little place. We were the first ones there and kind of worried about how it would be. We should not have worried. I had tuna cooked like I had never had it before. Neal had sausage with broccoli and Shayna had the best egg plant parm I have ever tasted.
We finished lunch and headed for the boat. We had a long boat ride to get to our next stop.
We had our first Gelato and all I can say is wow.
We went into a textile museum with a perfumery. Of course this was in another amazing Grand Canal house. This time even Shayna did not have to pay. I think we were the only ones there so we had a lot of fun. I snuck some touches and no one seemed to care.
Then it was to the Oriental Museum. I had an appointment to get a special blindness tour. This museum was on the top floor of a modern art museum. Of course we did not pay. We were greeted at the door and brought up to the top floor.
This was a personal collection that was donated about 100 years ago. We were asked to sit down at a table and they started bringing us things. They showed us how lacquer ware was created in Japan. They had tactile drawings of musical instruments. We played with and Indonesian shadow puppet. I learned how to read Italian Braille. We saw cool armor and I even tried it on. We have the pictures to prove it.
We were pretty tired when we were done and headed back home.
I did have a short nap and that brings me to now and I should mention that I can hear boats in the canal beneath our window.
I have stopped bumping into everything in the apartment. I love this cute place and could easily live here.
I am so hoping that we have kindled the travel lust in Shayna.
We left for dinner at about 8:00 and this time we were headed to an actual destination restaurant.
We took the bus to St Mark’s Square and followed directions through a maze of winding narrow streets. We ate in a small, old church. The food was, of course, delicious. I had vegetable soup for my first course and pork and grilled vegetables for my second course. Our service was really special. I had a crush on our waiter.
We left the restaurant around 11:00 and a few shops were open. I bought a lovely hand bag. It is not a famous brand but it is quite lovely and we did not buy it from the guys on the street selling fake label bags.
We took our usual boat but it does not seem to stop at our stop late at night. We got a little lost but felt sure we were headed in the right direction and we were.
We stopped in our little square for a night cap and got home about 1:00 in the morning once again.
I think we were all asleep pretty quickly.