The trip to Venice

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We got up early and bid farewell to lovely Umbria and our castel house in Piegaro. (we hope to go back there for a whole week someday!) We got on the road and tried to go visit the town of Assisi (where St. Francis who lived there in the 1200’s and was very popular for his laid back and environmentally friendly ways of life and who was later made a patron saint). Tried is the key word here….it was Sunday morning and there was a line of cars miles long trying to get up the hill into the town. We can only figure it was lots of people going to pay homage to St. Francis on a Sunday, but regardless we turned around and only saw the town from the distance.
At this point we had to say goodbye to our very trusty tour-guide, Simone. He was catching a train back to Rome. We cannot thank Simone enough for all of his help and for showing us the NON-tourist parts of Rome and Umbria...many spots we never would have found without his guidance.

We then were back on the road on our way to Venizia! The drive was not too bad (at least not for me as a passenger….poor Erin has been a driving CHAMP…he and Margaret-our GPS- are quite the driving team!). We decided to drive along the east coast on the way there, just to avoid the racing-strip highway for a change.

Once outside the city we parked the car, did our best to consolidate luggage and headed off to the waterways. This is the part of the trip where we realized we had not fully prepared in advance. We were not completely clear on where our hotel was located in Venice…we only knew it was on one particular section of the Grand Canal. We made the trek through the garage (each toting luggage behind us)…and onto our first Vaporetto (water bus). It went straight to the main area of the Grand Canal and then we were kicked off, quickly learning that it was strictly a bus back and forth to the garage. We boarded a second vaporetto and got off a stop which we thought was close to our hotel. We pulled our bags through the streets of Venice until we realized we had absolutely no clue what we were doing. Desperately (as the bags were getting heavy FAST) we asked a reception desk of another hotel. Erin’s face sunk to the depth of the canal when I told him we had to get back on another water taxi to get to our hotel. Our third wait and ride for the day finally dropped us off two seconds from our hotel. (yeah, we had picked this hotel for the convenience and to avoid dragging bags for hours around Venice….)

The hotel was beautiful. Our room had a balcony which overlooked the Grand Canal. We refueled with a pizza on the back patio and then set out to explore Venice. The whole town is truly a maze. It is technically 100 islands all next to one another and connected by multiple bridges. There are no streets or cars, just canals and boats. We wandered for a few hours….going by San Marco’s square and church, the Rialto bridge, the Grand Canal, and lots of squares and churches. We settled into one beautiful square for a nice dinner. Erin had lobster bisque and pork. I had calamari and spinach ravioli. We were both too full for dessert!

The beauty and charm of Venice at night quickly washed away our earlier frustration and we went to bed early in anticipation of the next day….