2004
Monday, July 19 - Venezia
Lodging: Palazzo Zenobio (phone = +39 41 5228770; email = mooratr@tin.it)

1:40am I stayed up late updating the journal entries. I was wired from the trip in Verona and was not ready to sleep.

Once I go to sleep, I plan to sleep in pretty late. We know of a breakfast place that goes until noon, so...

Our plan is to take water bus route #1 (long route) as a good tour, as recommended by Giorgio, and check out some other sites as time allows.

We are at a halfway point in our vacation. We imagine Santa Margherita and Roma will be even more highlights to our Italian adventure. I am hoping the accomodations at Santa Margherita are the best we have seen. I plan to relax by the water there. In Roma, we have a tight schedule to get as much siteseeing in as possible before going back to the states.

We got up and got outside a bit after 11am. It felt good to finally sleep in a bit. We had seen a place that serves breakfast until noon, so we stopped there and ate. We then purchased 24 hour boat passes (10.5 euros per person) and took line #1 as Giorgio recommended. It was a great way to see the city. We probably set some sort of record on the length of time we were in Venice before actually boarding a boat!

As usual, I preceded to take a lot of pictures. We will have plenty to choose from when we get back home. We made our way to the Basilica di San Marco. The whole Piazza San Marco was full of people. We waited in lines to enter the basilica and had to make sure we were properly clothed (no sleeveless tops, etc.). Erica had purchased a scarf earlier in the trip for this very purpose. She whipped off her scarf-belt and made it into scarf-sleeves. No pictures were allowed inside and it was the usual amazing cathedral scene. The mosaics inside were incredibly detailed.

We then went to the Palazzo Ducale (Dogi Palace) and checked out a bit of the museum and prisons. It was a maze, as well as amazing. We were pretty wiped out and hungry by the time we got out of there (around 4pm) and hunted for a good lunch spot. While in the museum, we had noticed a cool restaturant on a roof, but it was impossible to locate from the ground.

We ended up at a nice waterside cafe with no menus, no receipts and euros only accepted. We had a great mushroom pizza, 3 bottles of water, banana split and a strawberry sundae for 31 euros (yum)!

The water here is pricey and you ca not drink it from the tap. We have spent quite a few euro on drinking water and have been getting by with less drinking water than usual. Erica can not wait to get back to the states so she may drink at least eight glasses a day.

We then strolled along the waterway and then boarded a boat to get to the Ponte di Rialto bridge. This bridge is similar to the Ponte Vecchio bridge we visited in Firenze (lots of shops and a walking only bridge). The boat was ridiculously crowded and no breeze, so we were dying to make it to our destination. At the bridge, Erica found a cool purse and decided to get it (only 18 euro and Italian leather - woohoo!). We shopped around a bit more and then found another boat connection headed back to the hostel.

Once we got back to the hostel, I uploaded all the new photos, recharged the camera battery (totally dead) and we relaxed a bit. Our next endeavor tonight will be to confirm dinner reservations in Santa Margherita tomorrow night, update these journal entries online, check email and find a great place for dinner.
...
Okay, so we did update the blog entries, checked email and found a little place to eat by the canal, but we did not confirm our Santa Margherita reservation for tomorrow. The restaurant was okay - Gregg really liked his lasagna, this time it had a hint of apple flavor. Who would have thought they can make lasagna so different every time? Okay...I guess it is the birthplace and all... Erica had fresh pasta bolognese. It tasted kind of like swedish meatballs without the meatballs. :) We skipped dessert when we saw the prices and opted for finding gelato on our route back to the hostel. Erica had cream and mint chocolate chip, Gregg had coffee and mint chocolate chip. We had them in the dish - Gregg is not as impressed with their cones here in Italy.

We journeyed back to our room to watch Twilight Zone and eat olives we had purchased at a little market earlier. There were many guests on our floor this day. I am unsure if they were a rowdy bunch or the commotion is simply due to the fact that the walls of our hostel are as thin as paper...cheap paper. You can hear every sound.

Gregg opened the olives and enjoyed several. Erica tried one and decided that she had to stick to black olives going forward if they are not fresh - too salty. It was then up to Gregg to finish the entire container of olives by himself. He made it through like a trooper. In the middle of the first episode of Twilight Zone, Erica had dozed off again. Gregg stayed up to watch more and take a shower.

Zzzzz...

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