Since we had limited time in Salzburg yesterday due to our late start and last minute scrounging for a hotel, we spent 1/2 of today wandering the streets of Salzburg and discovering new history. Howevr, we had a 5 hour drive to Venice ahead of us, so we left around noon. We drove through the Alps (literally... there's probably 30 km of tunnels between Austria and Italy) and met with a few delays: for 20 minutes we had a read light for one of the tunnels (no idea why) and then in Italy we had to wait in line at the toll booth for an hour because traffic was so backed up.

We decided to park on the island where it's safer and closer to where we were staying and took a water bus to our hotel. Claire had bought some study materials for the Italian language and she had been able to use it a lot (so many people don't speak English here). The hotel (recommended to us by Susan's former roomie, Christine) is nice and we were glad the staff speak English. We checked in and got our bearings and planned out our evening. We consulted Rick Steves and found an inexpensive pizzeria, which turned out to be excellent (thought the service was a bit slot).

We went to St. Mark's Square to find out where we would be going the next day to save time tomorrow. What a difference between night and day of the city. At 10pm, there were still crowds of people on the square, but during the day there are MOBS of people. Claire bought a great mask for her collection and we had a great evening walking around and listening to the live entertainment on the square (every restaurant seems to have a live quartet playing great music).

Labels: Austria, Europe 2008, Italy