September 24, 2008 – Florence / Venice

Aidan’s Morning: I woke up with a sore throat and stuffy nose – GREAT! Left the hotel at about 8:30 to do some “secret” shopping. Had to hang around for an hour for the shop to open, but got what I was looking for – SUCCESS! Walked back to the hotel, completed packing and walked to the train station. Marisa’s Morning: Aidan’s sick! We still decided to split up to do shopping on our own. It probably was worse for Aidan since he’s blowing his nose so much. I am thankfully unaffected (knock on wood). After Aidan left I headed around the corner to the market. The vendors were just setting up so I walked around admiring the tapestries, lace, glass, paper, wool and leather goods. I was a bit peckish so I also visited the farmer’s market. They had everything – olive oil, fruits, vegetables and even pig snouts… I really mean they had everything!!! I could not decide what to eat so I went back out and got some paper, glass and a mask. I headed back to the main street for breakfast and opted for a café across the street from the hotel. I had a lovely fruit salad with nectarines, apples, kiwi, pineapple and strawberries. It was refreshing and filled the void. I then headed back to the hotel instead of visiting the leather shops as I had planned (big mistake). I watched Starsky and Hutch and Knight Rider in Italian while I waited for Aidan. When he came back we finished packing and headed out to the train station.Rest of the day:Ate McDonald’s at the station, not particularly inspiring. The train left 10 minutes late. The ride wasn’t as nice as the Rome to Florence leg. The car we were in seemed smaller. There were also tons of tourists in our car whereas we had an equal number of business people on the train to Florence. We arrived in Venice at about 2:30pm. We were met as promised at the station and travelled to the launch. We caught the taxi to the Rialto Bridge. The ride was luxurious, to say the least. The Rialto bridge was busy when we landed. We then walked the rest of the way to the hotel, which was an experience in itself. Venice is CROWDED. We checked in, dropped off our stuff and went for a walk. We walked to the Piazza San Marco, which was also crowded. We were a bit concerned that all we would see of Venice was crowds and crowds of people. Thankfully, that is only the case in tourist spots! We then continued wandering around. The smaller streets were more bearable. After having a piece of Pizza and doing some shopping etc. we came back to the hotel to do a couple of things (we have Internet access, yea!). Then we went to dinner, close to the hotel in a vine garden. The food was very nice indeed. Marisa had the pasta in the squid ink and said that it was excellent. We also had amazing desserts and a wonderful local Cabernet. After this we went for a walk around, Piazza San Marco was much less crowded and there were three groups playing classical music. We also picked up a few knick knacks and then headed back to the hotel.