Quarto d'Altina

We made it to our hotel just outside of Venice (having heard nightmare stories about people lugging suitcases into water taxi's and never actually being able to find their hotel in Venice) by about 5pm. Quarto d'Altina is about 20 minutes from Venice and our hotel was practically right on top of the train station so it was perfect. We decided to venture into Venice for dinner, even though we hadn't planned it (look at me, working outside of the plan - thinking outside of the box! see, i can be spontaneous sometimes!), and we had a drink at the hotel bar while we waited for the next train. They had these cute little pretzels at the bar in the shape of "B", which we liked.


The sun was so pretty at the train station so we took some photos and Geoff tried out the "video" option on my little digital camera he got me as a wedding present. (video to be posted shortly - we're having uploading issues)

We got into Venice and it was REALLY crowded. Like, Times Square crowded. SO much so we couldn't really fully enjoy it, since we didn't want to get lost and not be able to find the train station, so we didn't wade in too far, but we took a few pictures.



We had dinner at a little restaurant that turned out to be a tourist trap and the food wasn't very good, so we tried to find our way back to the train station, but realized we couldn't make it to the train in time for the next one and would have to wait it out an hour. Geoff was a bit disenchanted with Venice at this point, for a variety of reasons, not the least of which was the crowds and the bad food experience, and he was talking about not wanting to come back tomorrow. I couldn't have disagreed more, knowing that Venice had amazing things to offer, if we ventured beyond the tourist traps. And I'm glad to say, I was right....