Arriving in Venice is like awakening in a Romance novel from the Renaissance era. It seems surreal – with the gondolas and boat taxies gliding through the Grand Canal and the cloth covered tables outside every restaurant. Even though I write this on the train leaving Florence (also a wonderful city), Venice is still everyones favorite so far. We are met at the airport by a lovely woman who walks us to our waiting taxi BOAT! As someone who loves the water, I am delighted to board the boat for the best taxi ride ever. We ride through the water to the Grand Canal – arriving at our Hotel, the Antioche Figure, about 25 minutes later. Although very late (around 11 pm) there were enough lights to see that our location is perfect. A beautiful old, but charming, building with a Gondola Service right in front and the train station across the canal. It is obvious within minutes that we did not allow enough time in this enchanting city on the water. We are scheduled to stay only 2 nights and then will be off to Florence. Our rooms are small, but beautiful, with green marble sinks and a balcony that faces the canal (for Michael and I as well as Amanda and Henry). With reluctance, after finding nothing open to get a late night snack, we all retire to our rooms. The next morning; after having the hotel breakfast of coffee, meats and cheeses, croissants, juice, and other breads; we take the hotel’s free boat taxi to the island of Murano to see the glass blowing ‘factory’ and showroom. As we wind through the Grand Canal in daylight, we are all overwhelmed by the beauty of the city. At the Murano glass factory, I find a beautiful handblown bowl and matching individual bowls that will be perfect for serving fruit or dessert. Amanda finds a pretty bird and a beautiful bowl as well. The girls do not accept the offer to select a small handblown glass bracelet or necklace, but are happy to learn that I promise to pass my Murano glass to them when I’m gone (hopefully, when they are much, much older). Next, we take the boat taxi to the Piazza San Marco. What a beautiful piazza (plaza). We take some pictures and discover an orchestra on the piazza playing lovely music, surrounded by small cloth covered tables. This looks like the perfect place for lunch! Brittney is excited that the group includes a piano player and stops to watch her play. We find a couple of tables near the orchestra that is in the shade. It is a beautiful sunny day. We order a variety of sandwiches and pizza to share. Everything is delicious. We all order dessert, which comes in beautiful glass dessert dishes. As we sit there enjoying our food and each other’s company, we again are awed by the experience in which we find ourselves. 
We also visit the Basilica, a church with the most amazing stained glass windows. We then walked to the Rialto and pass beautiful buildings and bridges along the way. After walking many, many blocks, we make our way back to the hotel via the “vaporetto” – Venice’s version of the metro system. These are flat boat buses that make regular stops along each side of the canal, following a regular route. Convenient, but sometimes VERY crowded. Unlike the metro, there is no bar to hang onto if you happen to be in the middle of the boat. One must immediately learn how to stand on ‘sailor legs’ balancing as the taxi moves from one side of the canal to the other, bumping hard against the taxi stands that jut out slightly from the sidewalk edge. That evening is our Gondola/serenade ride and we find that we pre-paid for a gondola ride at a location just about as far as you can get from our hotel. Had we realized that there was a gondola available right in front of our Hotel, we probably would not have reserved the other one. Gondolas are everywhere, if we go again, we will not schedule anything ahead of time. We wanted this particular service because it included a serenade – how romantic, yes? Well, not so much. Once we arrived at the Gondola service (after a very long, crowded vaporetto ride), we found that they packed each gondola completely full. They each hold up to 6 people and every gondola had 6 people in it. There are only 2 comfortable seats, with 3 additional seats on the sides and 1 seat at the end. I agreed to let Hailey, Lexi and Brittney ride in one gondola; while Michael, Henry, Amanda, and I rode in another. With us, they put another young couple which, we later learned, were on their honeymoon. They ended up squeezed together on the back seat, trying not to be disappointed. The girls were put in a gondola with another couple and a single man who kept causing the gondola to lean to one side. The gondolier kept telling him to sit in the middle, but he paid no attention to him. Approximately 7 gondolas started out down the canal and then crowded together at a wide point, bumping into each other as they tried to get close enough for everyone to hear the man who was serenading and his accompanying accordianist. Not the vision any of us had! We really felt sorry for the honeymooners. After the serenade, we moved on through some of the side canals and at last it seemed more like what we had in mind. The gondola that Hailey, Lexi and Brittney were in was a few gondolas in front of ours. Not a problem until the wind suddenly kicked up, just as the girls’ gondola turned a corner into the Grand Canal. When our gondolier tried to follow, he could not fight the wind, so he had to go back, which meant we were separated from the girls!! Yikes! We ended up getting dropped off a couple of turns away from the location where we started. Assuming the girls were taken back to that location, we headed in that direction. I was calm but admittedly on edge. I was so grateful when we turned a corner and there were the girls waiting patiently for us to come get them. Thank goodness! But other than that, the whole experience was a great disappointment. We were all hungry by then (about 8:40 pm) and went to the restaurant near the Gondola station. The food was really good and Michael and I shared a bottle of wine. It’s been a long time since we have done that, so both of us were feeling pretty good when we left to catch the boat taxi. Unfortunately, one of us (there remains a disagreement as to which one, Michael or I) did not validate our ticket, and the vaporetto police decided to pick this time to check everyone’s ticket. We had to pay a fine of 52 Euros for being on the taxi without a validated ticket! Needless to say, not a good way to end the evening. Still, we all did not want to leave this beautiful city. The next morning, we regretfully pack up and ask the Hotel to hold our luggage as we walked across the bridge to have one last lunch in Venice. We went to a pizzeria that Amanda spotted the day before and are seated at the water’s edge next to planter boxes full of flowers, where we have the best pizza in the world — seriously! Everyone (but me, because my husband is a saint and gets my luggage for me) walks back over the bridge, gets their luggage and comes back over the bridge to the train station (important to note here that the bridge consisted of a high arch of many stairs up and down the other side), where we settle in for our train ride to — FLORENCE…
The girls shop in one of the booths at the Rialto Market.
Hailey on our balcony.
Having breakfast outside our Hotel.
Safari So Good 