Venice–Truly A City Under Water!

Friday dawned.  Our plan WAS to be at St Marco by 9:45…but Kari was sleeping pretty soundly, the hotel was relatively quiet, so I didn’t push. I opened the window to see that it was raining, so that did not instill an urge to rush out the door either.   I really thought we would be the last ones to breakfast.  NOPE!  It seemed all of us slept in, and I bet the rain had something to do with that,  We did meet a family from Bellingham….it IS a small world. 

Breakfast was petty mediocre (weak cappuccinos) …so we figured we would get meat and bread and cheese and have a picnic at The Square…we had done that years ago and loved it.

Well, the weather had different plans for us.

I had packed an umbrella (thankfully)…but I had not used it (not so swell) as it proved problematic from the get go.

My Helly had a hood, so Kari had the umbrella.

First, Kari has come to the conclusion and I agree…that someone…every night… moves the signs that direct you to The Rialto and St Marco.  We thought we were following…but we pretty much managed to be lost most of the time.  The only redeeming feature was that everyone else seemed lost too…and invariably you would see fellow tourists go down streets…peak around a corner, only to turn back again.

We knew we were walking in circles when we kept coming back to THIS light fixture:

I like the dragon…and the umbrellas were pretty perfect for the day.

We made our way to our destination (an hour and a half later than expected) only to find the entire square under water…and lines and lines of visitors up on platforms to keep them out of the water.

This is taken down the alley that goes into The Square And this is down some random alley!

Shop keepers were sweeping out their stores.  It was raining.  It was windy.  It was pretty chilly (not cold).  Our plan for touring and a picnic were trashed.

We stopped for coffee to regroup

We went into what we thought was a church because, well, it was dry and warm.  It is now used for music, but you could still make offerings and pray.

If you look REALLY close, you will see the candles are electric!  You just grab one from underneath, and “plug” it into one of the sockets.  Pretty?  Yes.  But I kind of like the traditional candles.  BUT, I guess these are safer.

We walked along…found a casualty of the day:

 

As we walked and tried to find The Rialto Bridge (DARN those moving signs), we came across the vegetable market and the Fish market.  It was beautiful!  Kari, not being a fish eater, ran before she was scarred by the smells, but I hung around. The veggies were just gorgeous.  The strawberries were just huge!  I have always liked “hanging” things!  Check out the squid and the fish in the bottom two pictures!

 

We finally found The Rialto Bridge.  Kari consented to take my Terrible Towel picture because she could do so from far away and pretend she did not know me.

 

Even with the rain, the views here were great.

We got a couple pictures together and Kari took some of other people.  It just seems so natural to me to ask people if they want photos together…but some seem REALLY surprised you would offer! 

 

After this we walked some more…and stumbled upon a Chinese Restaurant.  Kari has been pretty limited in her opportunity for Chinese food, and with our picnic plans scratched, we went in.  The restaurant was beautiful and the food not too bad.  Quite honestly, I have not seen “sweet and sour pork” on a menu in Hong Kong, so I knew this place was a blend of traditional and “tourist”

The tea and soup hit the spot…as did the dumplings.  We lingered here because it was warm. 

We were going to make our way to Academia (we figured EVERYONE would be looking for indoor activities)…but we found ourselves back here:

So we made our way to our room for dry socks, a nap, and a new plan for the evening.  Kari ended up snoozing pretty hard, I caught up on mail, my IPod games, and generally had a quiet afternoon.  It was fine.

  This made me smile on the way back…a splash of color on a pretty dreary day.

We went out for a cocktail before dinner, then dinner was back to the same place as the night before…this time for Pizza as that seemed to be what all the locals were having. 

We planned again, to get to St Marco early (this time we committed to it) and prayed for dryer night…which would lead to a dryer Square!