Seriously, it has been hard to keep track of what day of the week it is.  But today we had an early start to move from our Montecatini base to our Venice base.  Well, in reality, to Mestre, the “out of city” hotel area for Venice which does equate well to Montecatini Terme.  After all, who has heard of Montecatini, despite it being full of hotels of tourists visiting Florence, Pisa and Lucca, as we did, as well as many other places.  Mestre is the same, except everyone goes to Venice.  There really is not much to Mestre.

However Venice, when we went there this afternoon, was everything I had expected, with some unexpected twists.

We had been recommended to first approach St Mark’s by boat; today we were on a Vaporreto, tomorrow we do the same journey on our own boat.  The Grand Canal is beautiful – too many things to look at to think of photos.  St Mark’s was not what I expected, with the Basilica hidden until you get into the Piazza.  The Campanile was bigger and closer to the Basilica than I imagined.  I’ll be taking more pictures tomorrow, when we have our guide tour (which does take us inside St Mark’s – I’ve checked).

My first impressions of Venice are:

Artistic license next – I could not get far enough back to get the Basilica and Campanile in one photo without taking unusual steps!

We have two more days of getting lost in little passages, exploring the waterways, eating and drinking, as well as our guided tour tomorrow morning.