Viva Italia - Venezia day 2

Indiana Jones came to Venice on a quest for enlightenment, and we came to Venice on a quest to find Indiana Jones. In "The Last Crusade", he finds an old library in Venice, through which he finds a knight that leads him to Petra and the Holy Grail. The old library is in fact San Barnabas church and it took us quite a long while to find it. BUT WE DID!

E's quest today was to find the perfect Venetian mask. It took hours, but we found it. (It's beautiful - she chose well). Sprout decided a few trips ago that he was going to collect 'typical' hats from the places we visit. We found him a gondolier hat to add to the collection, that he happily sported all day. I wanted to go across the lagoon to the other side for no other reason than to say that we did. San Giorgio church, which you can see directly across from Piazzo San Marco, is lovely. They also have a bell tower ready to be climbed for a good view, only their's feels a bit like cheating because instead of climbing 400+ stairs, they have an elevator. (Very civilized). We had an afternoon drink in St Marks Square, serenaded by a quartet (violin, accordian, piano, clarinet), then set off on another quest for postage stamps. With time to kill before dinner (and in keeping with my Disney World analogy about Venice - time for a water ride), we climbed aboard the waterbus again for what turned into an hour-long tour around the canal. Great way to get a feel for more of Venice. Seeing cars was almost a disappointment after 2 days without them. There is an enormous carpark just outside of Venice that we rode past on our boat. We've all enjoyed the lack of wheels over the past couple of days.

I have referred to our week in Italy as the taste of Italy tour (ha), meaning we were only going to each place long enough to get a taste of it, rather than that we were going to eat our way around northern Italy. It could also be called the Tiramisu tour because it has become a requirement that every night at dinner, we taste that restaurant's tiramisu. I am not a fan of the stuff, but I can tell you from taste testing that the best one anywhere is at Restaurant Alla Rampa in Rome near the Spanish Steps. So if you like tiramisu, the next time you're in Rome...

Tomorrow we head off very early to Verona and the last day of our trip before returning to Sweden on Saturday. I am afraid that many places will be closed because it is Good Friday, but if all we get to do in Verona is sit in the sun and soak up the atmosphere, that won't be all bad.