Morano

We wake up late and take pictures of our little neighborhood. I ask about the tour of the Morano glass factory that the hotel is supposed to provide. The guy at the desk this morning is younger and speaks English really well. He arranges the tour guide to pick us up. While we’re waiting, Kaitlyn goes to McDonald’s to get breakfast, the guide arrives, and we wait for another family who will come with us. Mom and Kaitlyn arrive just as we are leaving, so we eat on the boat after briskly walking to where it’s docked.

Mom notices that the shop they take us to is not the large glass factory she remembers seeing with Arleen 30 years ago, but this place does blow its own glass and they have beautiful stuff. After buying all kinds of glass jewelry and ahem a €400 vase (me), we go to more stores on Morano and buy more stuff. It’s when we go to these other stores and see some of the other items that we realize how overpriced the first place was.

We eat lunch on Morano and shop some more. We take the trusty No. 1 boat bus back to Ca D’Oro and our hotel. We have checked out, so the guy lets us leave our bags in the office while we walk to St. Marco’s Square.

Piazza San Marco

Long walk. We finally arrive at St. Marco’s square. “No, that’s not the Campanile. Is it? I don’t remember it being white. No, it can’t be. Where are all the people and why is it so small? Aha, there’s a sign pointing to San Marco over there. According to the map this is just Santa Maria’s church.. sigh let’s keep walking.” Like I was saying, we finally arrive at Piazza San Marco to find it filled with people (and pigeons). It looks nice. Mom buys t-shirts. But with so many people and no place to sit or eat, we leave not long after arriving. The walk takes a little longer returning, because we pass closer to the Rialta brige along the main route, which is much more crowded than the walk down. We should have planned on going shopping in Venice. I didn’t think that Venice would have much available, but there might be more stores here than in Rome.

Anyway, we eat dinner at a restaurant by our hotel. I feel that this place is the best restaurant we eat at in Italy. They have great food and a nice atmosphere. Their large family dog adds to making it seem a friendly place.

We have some time before we have to leave, so we sit and talk for a while with the guy at the hotel desk. He says that he’s doing this job as temporary work while he works on getting his “Internet TV” Web site going. It sounds like a good idea and he’s pretty nice, so I hope it works out for him.

Six-person couchette

For our overnight journey from Venice to Vienna, we have reservations in a six-person sleeper, or couchette. The bottom two bunks are taken by a nice Asian couple, who are already lying down when we arrive. We have an extra bed up top where we put our luggage (although there is plenty of room for luggage in the part of the cabin that extends over the hallway). But, what a tight fit. On the top bunk, where I sleep, is a folded-up luggage rack, reducing my bunk to about 11/2-feet wide. Mom has a luggage net dangling over her bunk. But the beds are otherwise comfy.