In and out of Venice

Wednesday we took the train from Milan to Venice, unfortunately the rain continued to fall, so we were only able to see shadows of the mountains to the north. We arrived at San Marco via the vaporetto (water bus) in the early afternoon and began searching for our hotel, which is just behind Piazza San Marco, but took us a half hour to find after getting directions twice! Once checked in it was most important for us to find a laundry service... Three sets of directions in totally in different areas we located the launderette! Feeling refreshed upon having clean clothes we set out to take some photos of the Piazza, San Marco Basilica & Doge's Palace. Then off to the Rialto Bridge, which spans the Grande canal via a number of routes of which Darren insists that he was not lost... We returned to our hotel just before the start of another downpour. During a break in the rain we snuck out to grab supper then returned to our room for the evening. The next morning it was sunny so we grabbed the vaporetto to the island Murano where the glass factories are located along with many shops selling their glasses, jewellery, figurines, etc. Unfortunately we were a little early for many of the shops, but we enjoyed our tour of the island. We needed to return to check out of our hotel, which it took us a little longer than expected to locate our hotel, again we were not lost! After checkout we went for a gondola ride through the many canals that our gondolier expertly navigated the narrow canals and the other boat traffic. A bite of lunch in the Piazza and we were on our way back to the train station to head for Florence. Venice was Beautiful...
Upon arrival in Florence we started walking to our apartment where we were to meet a lady from the apartment company for check in, but our train was 10 minutes late and the walk was 10 minutes longer than the company had said on the phone, so we thought we had missed her. Darren tried to use the payphone much to his frustration as it turns out they only take phone cards to make local calls and you need to purchase these cards at a convience store, which the first one that he got to was sold out of so had to walk to another piazza to purchase one. Upon getting a hold of Mrs. Leah it turns out she was upstairs the whole time and we only needed to buzz her!! Our room was very nice and she was excellent. After settling in we went to Francescovini for supper, which was excellent. Good night.