Day 3 Venice

It rained overnight, but this morning the sun has come out again. We are spending a little time this morning attending to email etc as we are to board the Dawn Princess tomorrow.

Peter has not had good news this morning. His father is still in hospital , now with pneumonia and Sandie has been informed by the staff he is very "poorly". At this stage all we can do is await further updates and keep everything crossed.

Irene has heard both her parents are now home and additional assistance in the home has been organised for them.

We are very lucky to both have sisters that are able to deal with these family issues while we are away - THANKYOU 

Our plan today is to take in a bit more of Venice via a boat trip through some of the backstreets ( oops - canals) out of the tourist areas.

 Thomas was our driver / guide for a backstreet stroll through Venice. It was really interesting and we saw a number of canals not frequented by tourists and a number of pubs and cafe's popular with locals - this info may have been useful 2ndays ago. Thomas was a captain in the army ( Milan) and has now returned to Venice. 20 years in army.

Anyway the tour was interesting and even saw the police having a "blitz" with the sped camera ( see below)

 So it seems the same things apply on water as the road. This is truly an amazing place and I am gob smacked by the logistics necessary for every day life.

Once we had returned, we decided to have our usual spritz - sitting out the front of the hotel, and low and behold a large cruise ship went slowly past - just seemed like a normal event...you can just see the top of the ship in the pics below.

Another interesting thing - at high tide, the water starts to come up through the manholes in St Marks Square - pools of water very quickly make their way across the cement.

Well this is our last night in Venice, we have just had a very nice dinner and have been watching a very large thunderstorm arrived- it has been so entertaining from our balcony to watch people scatter, restaurants rearranging the seating and the mobile vendors packing up in a few minutes.

We have thoroughly enjoyed our stay here and would certainly make a return visit - so vibrant, busy  and artistic.

We board the Dawn Princess tomorrow and we are so looking forward to unpacking. But, I am not sure when the next blog entry will happen - that will depend on access to wifi - so keep having a look and I will update when able.

By for now...