April 22, 2019

Suzanne and I left Portland at 1:25 pm Easter Sunday and arrived in Amsterdam at around 8:30 am, only to be confronted with masses of travelers going home from their holiday weekend. The picture above was of the line for Passport Control after it had cleared out some. Good thing we had a 4 hour layover, between the long lines and getting lost repeatedly. We were running on fumes with little sleep. Suzanne was falling asleep wherever we sat down.

We finally arrived in Venice at 4:15 this afternoon. Ensconced in the charming Hotel Antiche Figure, we decided on an uncivilized early dinner hour of 7 pm, so we could make it an early night. Below is our hotel (second building from the left) and the view of the Canal Grande from our window.

Having left the hotel a bit early we took a short walk admiring the bakeries and candy shops lining the street.

So the really wonderful and weird thing that happened, besides making it here, was running into two great people from my Portland Italian class at dinner. Suzanne and I were having a very enjoyable meal at Tattoria Il Vagone when David and Mary Kitch walked in…..What are the odds of that? We will try to meet with them again tomorrow for dinner. They are off to Croatia on Wednesday.

This church is right across the canal. That’s it for today, it’s almost 10 pm here and I’m headed for a good night’s sleep. Ciao! Buona Notte!