From Jerusalem (actually Tel Aviv) we flew to Venice, Italy on May 25, John's birthday. Things went
poorly, our hotel arranged transportation to the airport didn't arrive so we quickly had to arrange
another through Gett, an Uber-like app in Israel. We connected through Rome to another airline and
it took us forever to ride and walk to the gate only to find out we had to retreat a good way to
convert our e-tickets into a boarding passes. The flight to Venice was cramped, but short. In Venice
we took a taxi to Piazzale Roma (an entrance transfer point to Venice) where we went to a place
(Golden Luggage) where we had pre-arranged to check our bags. We took only what we needed for two
nights and then took a water taxi to our hotel. However, instead of leaving us near our hotel they
left us at a more public area, sort of near the hotel. We had to search around for quite awhile and
ask a lot of questions to finally find our hotel. The hotel was comfortable and friendly and was in
a very good location, near San Marco (St. Mark's), but back a little back in the alleyways. Then we
started having a great time and enjoying Venice. We continued eating at great outdoor restaurants,
just around the corner of our hotel (restaurants seemed to be everywhere). We took a very enjoyable
gondola ride through a whole network of quieter, back canals. We walked a lot through the alleyways,
across small canal bridges, throughout St. Mark's square, to the Grand Canal and the Rialto Bridge.
We saw St. Mark's from the exterior, but long, long lines detered us from going inside (In most places
we typically made lots of arrangements for tickets ahead of time, but somehow forgot about St. Mark's.)
When we finally left the hotel made arrangements for us for another water taxi that met us probably
only about 100 feet from the hotel.
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