Monday, April 28 - Venice

Monday morning breakfast was ham, cheese, fruit, croissants and some great little biscuits with applesauce inside. We were scheduled to start a four hour private tour of the city at 9:00 but our guide got stuck in traffic and wasn't coming until 10:00. So we went back to bed until the front desk called to say she was ready. Her name was Sylvia and she was about our age. She gave an excellent tour and gave us so much information that there was no way to remember it all. We learned that some wealthy people had black servants but they really weren't treated as servants but more like family members. They wanted them because they thought they were beautiful, kind of like a house decoration. The women had little images carved of their servants and they wore them around their necks. We saw some examples of this in a jewelry store. She told of one family whose son was killed in a war so they adopted the son's servant and gave him their family name. She took us into a neighborhood so we could see everday life. It's harder for the elderly because you have to walk everywhere and there are lots of steps. It's also hard for moms pushing strollers. We saw a daycare with little kids running around playing with toys. She explained that they never have to worry about someone getting ran over by a car, since there are no cars there. They do worry about them falling into the canals. Her own mother fell in when she was five years old and someone rescued her. She also took us to St. Mark's and we saw the crypt where Mark is kept. After the church she took us to see this beautiful spiral staircase in some courtyard. After that we parted ways and we went to lunch. We had a pizza and then we went back to the hotel and we took a nap for a couple of hours. When we went back out, we decided to walk the opposite way from the hotel, since we had never been in that direction. It became much less crowded and we were more in the residential areas. It was in this neighborhood that we found Troy some shoes. We had been looking for more dressy shoes for him everywhere but they all wanted 300 euros! These were on sale for 65, so a steal for Italy. He wore them out of the store. We kept walking and we found a nice park, very pretty. When we got to the end of the line for that, we turned around back to where we came from to find some food. We ended up at the Trattoria da Roberto near our hotel. It was so good and fun too. Everything we said to the waiter, his reply was "Fantastic!" He was cracking us up! Troy had grilled seabass and I had grilled scampi. We killed a bottle of Lambrusco Secco and had some dessert called "cooked cream." After supper we went on a gondola ride. The gondolier sang and he whistled. He was very good. Several times I thought he was going to hit other boats or houses but he never did. We saw Marco Polo's house and Casanova's house along the way. Afterwards I wasn't feeling very well so we went to the room. It was about 10:40.

16979 steps walked
6.74 miles
833.4 calories burned
2:51 hrs walked