(23-April) Venice

We slept for 13 hours, although, not without incident. You see, these European hotels are so "green" they can sometimes go overboard. The room has a feature where all of the power is cut when you are sleeping, which makes life interesting for people like me who use a CPAP machine, but we McGyver'd the power (wink) and got on with the job of recuperating.

We awoke to the sound of church bells peeling from Piazza San Marcos. After a nice lite European breakfast we spent a leisurely day roaming around, taking pictures.

European Manners

With all of the talk about "Obnoxious Americans", (let's face it, our reputation precedes us ("Jersey Shore"), I can honestly say I have never met such a rude and unfriendly bunch of people as the ones we have been exposed to our first 24 hours. They push in front of you in lines in a brazen way, they blow smoke in your face, they give you the "death stare" if you politely ask for directions. The staff in the restaurants are nice enough, but the tourists and citizens of Venice are vile. Sorry if that is offensive to my Italian brothers and sisters, but we expected, perhaps naively a lot more. Expect more of that sort of behavior going back in the same direction from here on out.

The food is delicious. We had a calzone in Piazza San Marcos watching the Pigeons, here's me getting a little carried away.

So this afternoon after lunch we took off by boat to the beautiful island of Burano, an absolutely stunning, picturesque island port village that time forgot where we found rows of perfectly painted colorful houses, feet from inlets with tiny boats. In the linen shops we saw old italian women hand-stitching lace. A light rain started so we dipped into a cafe for a couple of lattes, which got to be quite the hot spot suddenly as several dozen waited in a line outside. Here is one of the gift shops with a very old looking bicycle.

Burano Video

Venice Part 1 Video

Venice Part 2 Video

We could get used to this..