After another three hour sleep, I dragged my weary body out of bed and dressed hurriedly so as not to miss our taxi driver.  He never showed up, but we took another taxi to Gatwick, which was quite a mistake (it cost a pretty penny and pound).  

British Airways bumped us from our prearranged seats and put us on a mail plane which was oversold.  We did have one window seat, however, and Julie managed to get a wonderful shot of the Alps over which we flew en route to Venice. . .

The Alps as we flew over them on our way to Venice.

The first thing we noticed when we deplaned at the Venice airport was how warm it was.  The weather reports called for cold temperatures and even rain for the entire time we were going to be in Italy, so to be standing outside sweating was quite a surprise, not to mention that we had no appropriate clothes for steamy weather.  

There are two ways to take public transportation from the airport to the hotels of Venice: water bus (cheap) or water taxi (expensive).  After getting fleeced on that taxi ride to Gatwick, Julie talked me into being economical and we opted for the water bus.  We and our luggage were packed in with fifty or more other people with their luggage and we were off.  I believe we stopped at all the other islands along the route to Venice.  Finally, we came to our stop, Arsenale, only one stop before St. Mark's Square.  We off-loaded our luggage and dragged it over a bridge to our hotel, the Gabrielli Sandwirth. . .

This is a picture of our hotel, the Gabrielli Sandwirth.

The hotel from the outside is typical of so many along the Grand Canal and Lagoon of Venice.  Painted a deep coral color, with a weathered, almost antique look to the stucco and an even more weathered appearance on the shutters that opened half-way out to afford those lucky enough with those rooms a fabulous view of the waterfront, the Lagoon and both the islands of San Maggiore and Giudecca in the distance.  The reception area was small, but efficient, with marble floors and chandeliers.  An adjoining public area had a huge wood table in the center of the room with chairs around it and newspapers on it for anyone staying at the hotel to read.  Off this room was a dining room.  The dining room had a door leading out to a patio surrounded by rooms on all sides but open at the top.  We were led to a room up a flight of stairs that must have been a maids’ quarters when the hotel was still a private villa.  Ostensibly, we had two twin beds, but the space was so cramped they were pushed together, and I had Julie sleeping and coughing and blowing her nose right into my face (oh, yes, I was doomed).  Our bathroom was almost as large as our living space and the shower was about 2' square - barely enough room to put your body, let alone try to turn around and wash in it.  I was not a happy camper.

We dropped our stuff off in the room and then escaped to go find something to eat for lunch.  We were directed to an area that is somewhat devoid of tourists (as much as any place in Venice can be so), and found a simple little place to stop to eat.

Here I am on the street where we found the restaurant where we ate lunch our first day in Venice.  The width of this street is very unusual for Venice, where almost all the streets resemble alleys more than actual streets.

As we were walking along that street after lunch, we came across this side street strung with laundry as far as the eye could see!

This is one of the rare pictures we have of Julie on this trip.  She didn't trust me to take good pictures, so it was not easy to get her to allow me to take a shot of her instead of the other way around.  Here she is on one of the many bridges on the main street running along the Lagoon before you get to St. Mark's Square.

This is a picture of the Hotel Danieli, one of only two 5-star hotels in Venice.  Out of curiosity, on our way to check out St. Mark's Square, we wandered into the hotel and were just amazed.  It is incredibly beautiful and far more opulent than our extremely respectable 4-star hotel.  If you can afford it (and that's a huge "if"), we highly recommend staying here when visiting Venice.

On our way to see St. Mark's Square, we walked over a bridge with a great view of the "Bridge of Sighs."  Here, you see me with the famous bridge in the background.

Venice was hot, crowded and incredibly interesting and beautiful.  We arrived on the cusp of Italy’s Labor Day holiday, and everyone Italian had decided that the best place to spend the holiday was in Venice with Susan and Julie Rosser.  I mean, it was wall-to-wall people.  The lines were so long to get into the Basilica in St. Marks Square that we didn’t even bother.  There were so many people in St. Mark’s Square itself that even the pigeons didn’t know who to poop on.  (Video clip of St. Mark's Square - 6.35MB)

This is St. Mark's Basilica.  As noted above, although we did get to see the outside of it, the lines to get in were so long, that we never did manage to see what all the fuss was about.

This is the Campanile (bell tower) in St. Mark's Square.

We wandered around window shopping at all of the shops along the inside of St. Mark's Square and then made our way out into the surrounding shopping areas -- Venice is really just one big swap-meet, with shops crowded into every square inch around the many restaurants and gelato shops.  We tried to find a new pair of shoes for Julie that would be more comfortable than the ones she had.  Unfortunately, Julie has very particular feet, so this was not an easy task.  After trying every shoe in more than five stores, Julie finally begged me to let us go back to the hotel -- between her sore feet and low energy level due to her illness, she was done for the day.

This is a picture of a typical Venetian canal with a gondola floating by.  This is just one of the many such sights we saw as we attempted to find our way out of the maze of canals and alleys to get back to our hotel.

When we finally made it back, we rested for a brief period and then decided to have dinner in our own hotel's dining room instead of going back out again.  As with just about every place we ate in Italy, the food was fabulous.

After dinner, I convinced Julie to let me complain to someone about our room.  Needless to say, once I got done, we were told that they would find us a new room in the morning.  Feeling much better about that -- although not about the sore throat I felt coming on -- we retired to our microscopic quarters and went to bed after first repacking everything in anticipation of our move the next morning.

Use the links on the left side of this page to see days two and three of Venice.