Last night in Venice (sob!)

Wed night now. We have to leave Venice first thing in the morning to head to Torino. I'm going to miss Venice and am really sad to be leaving. I could stay here a lot longer. We've barely scratched the surface.

I went for a run early Tues morning. 40 min or so, walking from home, through the rialto market, then to S Marco square, then running along the waterfront. Up and down lots of steps for bridges. Not working too hard, just enough to remind my legs of what they need to do.

The rest of Tues was wandering around, getting lost, getting unlost. We found a nice park up near the train station. The shopping here is incredible, shop after shop of stuff. Lots of glass of course, some of it is tourista tickytacky, but mostly it's really nice stuff. Masks to die for. Lots of scarves and other fashion stuff, with colours that have to be seen to be believed. A 'man pashima' nearly found it's way into my bag, but I held out. It was a beautiful coppery gold orange bronze. hmmmm.....

Today was nice, more wandering around. I'm really intersted in seeing how they do things here. For instance, every day except Sunday is garbage day. Imagine that, they organize garbage pickup, sorted for recyclables I think, for every residence in a city of 60,000. I don't have the faintest idea how they figure out the efficient way of doing it, or if they just send out guys with their pull carts.

We've just finished checking email, and are planning to go out for a gelato for dessert and do some more strolling. It's a fine evening here. Maybe if we find a nice little trattoria overlooking the water we'll have some more wine. But we do have to pack, and get up early tomorrow. Then in Torino I have to find another source of internet, but it shouldn't be hard. This one is in the back of a funky clothes shop. It's a little arched grotto barely tall enough for me to stand up in. I think it was a wine cellar at one point. Or a tunnel. Who knows? ttfn