Made it to Venice

It was a long (24 hour) trip from Victoria to Venice but we arrived without incident yesterday about 5:30 pm and found our B&B hotel just across the Grand Canal from the train station.  In spite of it being in a very busy location it's actually quite peaceful, with small monastic rooms (being as it is in an old monastery).  Here's the view from our window across the old rooftops.  I've carefully omitted the huge multi-storey car parking garage just behind.

This area of Venice is where people who drive here leave their cars and take the vaporetto (water bus) down to the more touristy areas of the city.

Last night the sky was lovely and we walked around some of the backwater areas.  I love the canals because wherever you are you see gorgeous reflections of light in the water.

We sat at an outdoor cafe with a bottle of wine and a plate of fresh shrimp with oil and balsamic as the sun set.  Then wandered around the area which is as lovely as the rest of the city but with far fewer tourists. It is a busy time here though as we learned from a German couple last night. Thursday through Sunday is a four-day weekend celebrating May Day and people from all over Europe travel on this weekend.  

We found this out at dinner as many of the restaurants were completely full.  We managed to find a pretty place beside the canal where we had some expensive and not very good pizza and a mediocre salad.  Tonight we plan to go earlier and do something very Venetian: go an osteria, a kind of wine and food  bar where you can order wine by the bar and snacks kind of like tapas.

Today our friends Ritchie and Liz arrive to begin the bike and barge tour tomorrow.  We'll be going out to dinner with them and will likely have to wear our rain gear since it's been thundery and showery all morning.  Here's one last canal photo, this one showing raindrops in the water.  I'll try not to bore you with too many of these photographs, but it's all I can do not to take my camera out at every turn. This city is so unusual and so beautiful and historic. I know it's touristy and parts of it feel like Disneyland, but in the quiet back streets it's just magical.    Sadly the rain drove us back to our hotel this afternoon so we didn't get to walk around the ancient Jewish ghetto area.  Maybe tomorrow, as the weather is supposed to be improving.