Well, Broad Creek does have a lot of water and a lot of boats, just like Venice. However, Venice certainly has a lot of other things Broad Creek doesn’t have, such as souvenir shops every 15 feet, gelato vendors next to every souvenir stand, restaurants between every gelato and souvenir stand—plus the one big thing Broad Creek doesn’t have is thousands upon thousands trying to get into all of those places.

Venice is an interesting place. We almost didn’t go, but it was on our way to Germany so we decided to go and spend part of a day.

This morning we arouse early from our hotel in Rome. Since the hotel breakfast didn’t begin until 7:30 we decided to walk to the train station—Roma Termini—and eat there. The station had a MacDonald’s restaurant and we almost started to eat there but we did not recognize anything on the menu—probably because it was all in Italian. Very few places have English translations in the places we’ve visited in Italy, which makes it difficult.

We opted for one of the many croissant shops with some coffee with milk. We’ve learned that a half cup of coffee and a half cup of milk with sugar is nearly like the coffee we have at home.

We hopped on our train and began our journey across Italy to Venice. Unexpectedly we were served breakfast on the train. Even though we weren’t hungry, we ate the fruit bar and cookie bar. We opted for Coke to drink.

We arrived in Venice around 1 p.m. and walked to our hotel which was a seven minute walk but up and down two bridges which was hard with suitcases. To our surprise, our room was ready and it was one of the nicer rooms we’ve stayed in. Floors, walls and bath were all tile. Plus, it was larger than most of our bathrooms. We didn’t use it but it also has a bidet installed in the bathroom. There were even colored lights in the shower stall.

We were quick to shed our sweater and sweat shirt because it was in the mid-70s. Our hotel fronted on one of the canals. We started walking and walked all the way to St. Mark’s Square. It was a great walk with lots of bridges to cross the canals and with most of the smaller canals filled with gondola’s filled with people. I’m thinking it takes a strong person to propel a gondola. It looks like a lot of work—especially those rowing out in the main canal which not only is filled with gondolas but river taxis, Vaporettos and pleasure boats making lots of waves.

As we walked toward St. Mark’s it dawned on us that it was lunch time. We looked at several menus and stopped a a restaurant that had tables out on the street. Having tables out on the street in Venice is not nearly the task as trying to get by them in Rome, where sometimes you have to walk through the restaurant to get by on the sidewalk. The main streets in Venice are wide and there is no vehicular traffic to worry about. Now, getting around tourists, like us, is a completely different matter.

We settled on a restaurant that offered a special on spaghetti carbonara. If spaghetti carbonara has been served in Broad Creek before, we were unaware of it. We didn’t know what it was and chanced liking it. Turns out it is spaghetti with a sauce made of eggs, bacon, hard cheese, salt and pepper. It was delicious but very filling.

We made it to St. Marks, walked around and saw the Doge’s Palace which used to be the seat of government in Venice. We decided to catch one of the larger river taxis, Vaporettos, back to our hotel to get to see more of Venice. Because nothing was in English we couldn’t buy our tickets from the vending machines and another reason there was a fellow at the ticket stand charging people to help them buy a ticket. We walked a few hundred feet away to a ticket booth manned by a person and ordered our tickets. We took the boat that stopped at every predetermined dock along the canal. It was a lot of fun, but the boat was very crowded.

We went back to our room and rested a little while—OK, I did take a nap. After that we decided to walk the streets some more. To our surprise, there were just as many people out walking as earlier in the day. We had heard that once the cruise ship visitors left about 4, the streets became less crowded. But we didn’t find it that way.

Since we were going to have to leave early tomorrow morning, we went to a grocery store called Coop and bought some yogurt and pound cake for breakfast. Our hotel didn’t offer breakfast and we didn’t know what might be available at the train station. We were told a bakery around the corner didn’t open until 8 a.m. which is late for breakfast.

The top photo shows us just after we departed the train standing in front of the grand canal. The second photo shows us on a water taxi, which takes about 45 minutes to go from one end of the canal to the other, stopping at numerous stops along the way. Very scenic.