Not quite a moonlight serenade....

 

Back in the city, we wandered along and found a quiet bar in one of the laneways where we ordered wine and beers, and then looked at the wine list fine print at the bottom – Cover charge 5 euros per person …. what the??

You can’t come to Venice without having a ride in an iconic goldola, so we found a station and negotiated a price with one ….. of course, we wanted a singing gondolier, and so as the lights of the buildings came on, we wended our way through the canals and out into the Grand Canal, being serenaded as we avoided all the other traffic in the canal – peak hour in the gondola world!! It wasn't quite a moonlight serenade, the background music was provided by the thunder that was rolling in with the dark clouds...... and the smell of rain was in the air.....

 For over 900 years, this has been a male only occupation handed down from father to son… in 2009 the first female gondola passed the arduous exams, we kept our eyes out fro her, but couldn’t find any female gondoliers on this Sunday night.

The dark clouds continued to roll  in and the thunder sounded, so we headed for a restaurant away from the Grand Canal for dinner – it didn’t matter that the only view was the back of a construction site cause we soon had to move inside as the rain started and the waiters rushed to pack away the outside furniture and umbrellas…. I chose a delicious Veal Marsala dish with a salad…. lip smacking good!!!

We had planned to retrace our steps and walk back to the ship, but the rain was still falling … not to mention that we had been on our feet for more than 12 hours…..so we headed back to the Vaperetto station near the Rialto and joined the queue…… seems that everyone else in Venice was going home at the same time, so we huddled under the awning together out of the rain with about 100 of our closest venetian friends and waited for about ½ hour– until one finally came along with enough room for us to get on.

 From Piazza Del Roma, we walked back to the ship in the rain …. jumping in the puddles and laughing as we shared the highlights of the day ….. a wonderful day, topped off by a couple of Baileys on the top deck before bed – we left at 8.00 am and finally returned to the ship after 10.30pm…… a fabulously full day … and more to come tomorrow …. can’t wait!!