Ah! What a beautiful place! It is truly a world apart. What makes it a world apart? No traffic, no cars, no horns, no having to look right and left (or left and right) every time you cross a street. Once you move a couple of streets from the most touristic must-see areas, it is peaceful – my type of place. I would love to live here for a while. Although I understand that everything is made a bit more complicated by the fact that there are no transportation other than boats. It is fun to watch their delivery launches maneuvering the tiny canals. Everything from veggies to appliances gets deliver in those launches. The ambulances, the police, the taxis ….. everything is in boats. Do not think that moving around in the canals is flat water and easy going; the currents are complicated and change at different times in different canals, wind and thunderstorms can bring up a good chop, and there are boats of all type and size everywhere!

We got one-week vaporetto tickets, and did all the touristic things one does in Venice: visited St. Mark’s Basilica and square, paused at the Bridge of Sighs, went up the Gran Canal to the Rialto bridge and market, took a traghetto across the Gran Canal, got lost in the maze of tiny streets at least twice, spent a morning at the Museo Navale (a must if you travel with Roan), watched a couple glass blowing demos in Murano, talked to a couple of lace makers about their art in Burano and admired the 7th century mosaics at the Torcello church.

After six days on the hook (another name for anchor), we stopped for one night at Marina Fiorita to collect the engine water pump and our new addition, a camping lavatrice (washing machine) that, hopefully, will make us independent of launderettes. The engine part turned out to be the wrong one for our engine, but we were ready to go to Croatia, so I sent the part back using the Italian post (please all cross your fingers) and off we went, with the old pump back in and still working fine.