Friday, August 7th
It’s about 4am on Saturday, August 8th - local time here in Venice. I just had about 6-1/2 to 7 hours of really solid sleep. Now - I’m awake and struggling to fall back to sleep (my body adjusting to the time zone change). So - I thought I’d write a little.
Yesterday was a great first day in Italy. My flight worked out well from Denver - and I landed in Munich about 30 minutes early. This provided a nice needed gap to get through a pretty lengthy line in security. I spoke with a couple from Boulder, CO that were in Europe headed to northern Spain to see the full eclipse set for next Wednesday, Aug 12th. Bonus for us - Italy will be about 90% affected - with the line of totality hitting in northern Spain.
I made my way through the Munich airport to my next terminal - departing for Venice at 11:45am. I made contact with Greg at this time - as he had already made it to Venice from Raleigh, NC - and was waiting for me to land at the airport. My flight was only 1-hr from Munich to Venice (surprisingly short) - arriving into Venice at 12:45pm. Everything worked out well - met up with Greg right away and we took a water taxi into Venice.
Venice has got to be one of the most unique cities in Europe. No cars, no bicycles in the main city center - just endless canals through tight, winding streets. We found our AirBnb after about a 7-minutes walk from the Fondamenta Nove water taxi stop. Our place is right on one of the lesser-traveled canals - a really great location - easily walkable to the main tourist attractions in the city.
It was about 3:30pm on Friday, Aug 6th when we arrived at our place. We ended up showering and took about a 1-hr nap. Then - we hit the streets walking to St Mark’s Square.
I haven’t been to Venice in about 15-years. It was probably 95 degrees today. I was working on about 2-hrs sleep on the plane with limited nutrition. But, for some reason, I thought I could find my way to St Mark ‘s Square without a map - telling Greg: “if we just follow the people - they’ll lead us to St Marks”. In theory - it should have worked, but I ended up leading us a little south of our target. No worries - we had time to kill - eventually pulling out our maps to find the main city center. (I do have to admit when we got to the square initially - it looked so different than what I remembered - I didn’t even think we were there yet). Lots of people - but no lines going into the Basilica.
We took some pictures and hung out for a bit. It was nearing 6pm - and we decided to find a restaurant and try getting out of the heat. Both accomplished! We found a nice spot by a side canal and had a great dinner. Capped off the night with some gelato as we made our way back to our place. 9pm - I was completely exhausted - bedtime. Great 1st day!
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