Tuesday, October 8, 2013, Venice, Italy

The sky was still gray this morning, but the sea was calmer.  We arrived in the harbor of Venice and the ship made its way up the Grand Canal to our berthing place by 1 PM.  The passage seemed narrow and at least on our side they built large buildings right down to the water, in some cases they were built into the water. There were a lot of islands with boats of various sized plying back and forth with no seeming pattern.  There were smaller canals visible between rows of buildings with small boats moored along the side.

Once we docked I went out to see if any cache were nearby.  The closest was .31 miles.  As I walked toward the port exit the cache got further away.  I checked the GPS again and was now closer to a different cache, which was only .2 miles away.  I walked there and found the cache easily and signed the log.  The cache was a plastic envelope rolled up and hidden in a crack in  the brick wall along a small bridge.  The coordinates were right on.  After three other ports of call in Italy where no caches were accessible, I was beginning to wonder if I would score one in Italy.  After I found the cache I walked back to the ship.  Round trip to the cache was a little over a mile.

Back on board I met Gerri and we went to afternoon tea in the Concerto Dining room.  It wasn't very well attended.   We had some small sandwiches and desserts with our tea.

Since our tour didn't meet until 6 PM we also had the daily hors d'ouvres at Club 6 at 5 PM.

Our tour scheduled at 6 PM was a gondola ride.  A water taxi picked us up at the ship and took us to the area of St. Mark's Square.  It was raining hard when we got on the taxi boat but that stopped before we docked downtown.  We walked along the water front to St. Mark's Square and to a gondola station on a side street.  One of the other passengers fell in the square and hurt her head.  There was a delay while paramedics came to take care of her.

We boarded the gondolas near a Best Western Hotel.  Four passengers we assisted into each gondola.  We were assigned to the gondola that carried the singer and accordion player.  The gondola ride lasted for about an hour.  The singer was very good and was able to project his voice very well, in the wider canal areas the gondolas bunched up so everyone could enjoy the music and singer.  Since it was getting dark we probably didn't get many good photos.

After the gondola ride we walked back to the water taxi and returned to the ship.  We had left the ship directly on to the boat.  On the return trip we were taken to a shuttle dock and had to walk about a quarter mile back to the terminal and go through a security station to show our passports before boarding.

We decided to have dinner at Alfredo's on deck 6.  I had pizza and Gerri had a tuna baguette.  Very good.

Back at our room Gerri had determined to use all her remaining internet minutes after I posted this blog.  The minutes don't carry over to the next leg of our cruise, since that is considered a different cruise.