Monday, August 10, 2009

Dateline : Venice, Italy, August 10, 2009


After waking up from the first good night’s sleep in 2 days at the Carlton Grand Canal Hotel (faces the Venice Tren Stazione across the Grand Canal) around 8:45, I stumbled down to Anne’s room shared with Blakely, Cat and Tay.  As promised, Anne had gotten up real early (had been gone 15 minutes according to B), to go do our laundry.  We had found the Laundromat the night before on our way to dinner.  I woke up the girls and my bedmate, Ford and we all headed down to a grand (canal) breakfast.  The best yet with eggs and bacon and the works!  Anne quickly arrived to down some herself leaving our clothes in the rinse cycle—sure that no one would want them.  Of course they were safe and our assumptions proved correct. 

Our second job of the day was to find our accommodations for our 2nd and last night here in Venice as the Carlton had told us when we checked in that they could only promise our 2 rooms for one night.  Our job proved to be a difficult one as it was not until about 4:30 that we secured a nice place to stay.  Apparently, Venice is no secret to tourists.  Despite the building panic Anne was experiencing, we were able to tour about 1/3 of the city on foot and check out the Venetian culture while stopping at every 4 star hotel we passed which were all booked.  Finally, we gave up and went back to the Carlton where our luggage was stored and sat down to plot our next strategy. 

The Plan

Blakely and I were to go to the nearest internet kiosk/shop and buy some internet time and do the Priceline thing that we had gotten pretty adept at during our trip.  Success was achieved in about 30 minutes when we bid $275 per room for a 5-star hotel and the Westin Europa accepted the bid (darn it-should have bid $250 instead!)

This was a coo as we had to pay more for 4-star accommodations on previous nights.  The Westin proved to be luxurious and even had a small workout room in which to sweat a little more.  Taylor was immediately crestfallen when she examined the posted menu and saw that a grilled cheese sandwich was 20 Euros or $30.00.  She almost started to cry cause she knew her dad would not be to amenable to honoring that request.  As it turned out, we headed out after showering and primping to a nice inexpensive trattoria/pizzaria (Ristorante Piccolo Martini) and Tay got her favorite menu item (plain spaghetti pasta-no tomato sauce, no butter, no olive oil—I really mean plain, but she loved it.)  Ford had a Fanta and after I examined the can and found out that it had more sugar and calories than a coke per ml, I realized why he was speaking intelligible fake Italian to our  Bangladesh waiter who did not know Italian and told him so in broken English.

We concluded our evening with an enjoyable stroll through a magnificently well-lit San Marco Piazza where we found 3 separate symphonic musical bands playing along its long colonnades.  Home to bed and a good night sleep in the 5 star Westin J

Our last day tomorrow in Venice and then on to Paris for a few days…Going to check out Priceline now for our hotels!

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