Venice!

Buongiorno everyone,
What an amazing city this is....we arrived about 6:30pm the night before last, but unfortunately Russ's backpack did not!! (we had decided to put our walking sticks, sharps etc.in it)...after dealing with the lost baggage department we made our way to the water taxi. I had studied the information in advance, so felt confident we would find our way (you can see where this is going, right?)...we had met a Swedish woman who was going to the same stop as we were. To make a long story shorter, we hopped off the boat when the driver yelled out, but by the time we realized it was not our stop he had left the dock! We walked for about 20 minutes in the dark, passing wonderful little restaurants with open air candlelit tables overlooking the canals. Eventually we DID find our hotel, and agreed that our intro had merely added to the mystic of this place! The nice thing is that Venice is safe to wander around at night. We ended the evening by sharing a 1/2 liter of vino Rossi and a pizza in a quaint little restaurant - perfecto!
Yesterday was spent walking, walking and more walking. Think we covered nearly the whole city - it is fairly small really, so you can cover a fair distance quite quickly. The weather was perfect and we especially enjoyed the Rialto market with amazing produce and fish. There are so many tourists here, and the main "streets" get plugged with people. We're not in a hurry so don't mind!
Yesterday afternoon we noticed a poster at a church, advertising a concert by an eight piece string ensemble, featuring Vivaldi's Four Seasons. As you may not be aware, Venice is his birthplace and he is one of the most popular baroque composers. The Four Seasons has always been one of our favorite classical works, so we bought the tickets and went back in the evening. We had great seats (festival seating) and wow, what a concert! This group was top notch, and our tickets cost E26 each. We both had tears on our faces when they began....wonderful.
When we returned to the hotel the lady at the front desk presented us with Russ's backpack!! It had been weighing on our minds yesterday, wondering what we would if it failed to show up. The lost baggage people at the Venice airport had traced it to San Francisco-it had not been transferred after we cleared customs. It was a good lesson- in the future we will just check the sticks etc through, and carry on our bags.
On a negative note, I have a cold that has hit me hard, so that is annoying. I brought drugs however, and should be feeling better soon. Today we may explore the canals, using Rick Steve's suggestion for a self guided tour.
Russ just posted a photo on the blog site of the Grand Canal,and we will post a few more shots from yesterday.
These are just iPhone photos - can't send any from the good camera until we have access to a computer.
Ciao until later,
Linda


Sent from my iPod