An evening in Venice

View from my hotel room
Originally uploaded by jamietr.

9:18 PM local time.

We did some roaming around Venice this evening. I met Mom and Dad at 5:30 and we headed out into the streets of Venice. It’s really so cool. I’ve never been in a city quite like this. Lots of people everywhere and a labyrinth of wide and narrow passageways. I had this image in my mind of running through the city on a night when the entire city was deserted.

And speaking of images, I have posted a set of pictures from Munich and Venice for those interested in checking them out. (The pictures are on my Flickr account, so feel free to post comments to the pics.)

I was eager to see Piazza San Marcos since vickyandnorm had built it up so much in my mind. I was not disappointed. It was exactly as they described it, full of people and pigeons and music from the sidewalk cafes. I wanted to go up in the Campanile, which is the tall tower in the piazza which gives a birds-eye view of the city, but I decided to wait until tomorrow to do that. Instead, we wandered about the maze of canals and passageways, taking photos, window-shopping (Mom, anyway), and delighted in the fact that I was in a city as old and famous as Venice. (Shakespeare wrote about Venice; he never wrote about New York^*.)

After wandering around the city for a while, we came back to the hotel and then decided to go find a place to have dinner. We wandered a short distance from the hotel and finally settled on a quiet, canal-side restaurant called Restaurante da Raffaele. We sat outside and had a great meal. Spaghetti and meat sauce, bread sticks, and an Italian beer called Sans Souci. I had ice cream for dessert and I managed to clean my plates.

We came back to the hotel and I was pretty wiped out at this point. I came up to the room, posted pictures and now, I’m about to read myself to sleep. I’m beat and I need a good night’s sleep so that I can be ready for a full day tomorrow. We board the cruise ship at 1 PM-ish but the ship stays docked in Venice for 24 hours after that so we still have time to explore the city. And he11o_sunshine and jkashlock arrive tomorrow as well.