Venice - day 3

Last night we went to supper at a restaurant recommended by a student who Adam knows from university who is Venetian. The food was rather mediocre, frozen veggies and frozen fish - I remember from our family visit 12 years ago having the same problem, we found the food very mediocre and very disappointing. When I was here in January on my photographic course we went to the same restaurant every night and the food was very good - I now see why we went to the same place every night, if you find a good one, stick with it! Problem is I cannot remember where that restaurant is! I have added an extra of a photo I took last night, hand held from the vaporetto on our way to supper.

I started today with a swim in the hotel pool - they have an enormous pool (apparently the architect got his measurements muddled up between feet and metres) which is lovely. I swam over 1km and then felt quite ready for breakfast. It was another sweltering day, I must say we are tired of this heat and being constantly hot and sweaty. We had a skip-the-queue guided tour booked of the Doges Palace (as Luke was complaining we were not visiting Venice in any depth) but the boys were so late to breakfast and consequently we were so late to the tour that we missed it. Fortunately they swapped today's tickets for tomorrow.

We wandered around the alleyways of Venice, at least they are shady and cooler than the large open squares. We did a bit of shopping and then lo and behold, we found a restaurant for lunch just off St Marks Square, contrary to the tour guides recommendations, that was terrific! Certainly our best meal eaten here so far, and who would have thought being near such a touristy area we would find such a gem.

This is a photo of Santa Maria della Salute, simply known as Salute, with all the modes of water transport in the foreground - vaporetto (water bus), water taxi (the one with the beautiful polished wooden finishes) and of course gondolas.

Then we went back to the hotel to collect our bags and we got a water taxi to the boat to check on. It was all very efficient and so far we are super impressed! We have an enormous suite and I can see that we won't want to leave the boat to go anywhere when we have fabulous food and all drinks included right here, and we can avoid the sweaty crowds in town. 

We are not really the cruising type - and believe me there is a type, you can spot them a mile off - but I can see that we will enjoy our next 10 days on this boat. 

Tomorrow is our last day in Venice and the boat sails tomorrow night for Croatia.