Covered in a layer of fog and slight mist, Venezia has been truly magical. We've gotten lost on the side streets, tasted the most delicious brioche and been over what seems like every bridge. We arrived yesterday by train to Venice then boarded a vaporetto (water bus) to get to our hotel, which is on Lido, a long island just East of the main island of Venezia. It is a perfect location, we have to take the water bus to get to and from Venezia but there is a stop directly out the door of the hotel and it only takes about 5 minutes to get there. The first day we pretty much just wandered, it got dark pretty quickly and it was amazing to see everything lit up, all of the Christmas lights and beautiful ornate lampposts. We stopped at the Rialto bridge, with all of it's tourist and jewelry shops (there are a lot of jewelry shops here and we've been doing a lot of window shopping!). For dinner we waited outside until exactly 7pm when Trattoria da Bepi opened. We had fresh seafood pastas, it was amazing J. After the long day of travel and walking around we were meandering back to the hotel early when we came across a Concerto at Palazzo Delle Prigioni, we thought, why not? So we paid the student price and had an amazing 7 piece orchestra concert in an ancient beautiful building. They were performing Vivaldi and Mozart. It was great and Rachel, the cello player was quite handsome!

Today we did more wandering, really took in San Marco square, went into the basillica, had the most delicious pizza for lunch and I just had to buy a new pair of boots because my cheap boots were letting all the rain in and my socks were getting soaked!

The one thing I do not like about Venice is the nasty birds! Grandma, I don't think you'd ever be able to come here! It's a constant power struggle between the seagulls and the pigeons, I think the seagulls were winning though, we did witness one monster seagull eating a pigeon…..

Tonight I think we are going to go to the University area of Venezia and try out a pub. Tomorrow we check out at noon but our train doesn't leave until 1:30am so we may try to check out some museums and then a little touring of Lido. There is a bus strike tomorrow morning so we'll see if we can even make it back to Venezia! We might just be stuck in Lido! J

I will write more when we make it to Vienna on Saturday!

Ciao

LoveLove

Coly