Our hotel was behind Hotel Violino D'oro in the picture and to get to it we had to squeeze thru a narrow alley between Hotel Violino and the tan and white building on the right. There wasn't any sign to point the way, and neither there's a lobby nor signage to tell if it's a hotel when you stand right in front of it. The entrance of this hotel is its restaurant. You have to go thru this restaurant to reach the front desk ... :-).
I booked the lowest price room I could find for the two of us and had not anticipated the room this teeny tiny. There's no space left for any amenities. The double bed took up ninety percents of the total space. There's a tiny dinning table with 2 little chairs pushing against the wall between the bathroom's door and the foot of the bed. You can't open the bathroom's door if there is a person sits at the dining table. I couldn't imagine the 2 average American would fit into this room. Oh well, we just needed some place to crash for 3 night stay.
The Grand Canal is the biggest waterway that snakes thru the city's of Venice in a large S shape, traveling from the Saint Mark Basin on one end to a lagoon near the Santa Lucia rail station on the other. On both side of the canal are buildings. Some of them are so old, and could have been built in the Medieval time.
There are several bridges built across it thru-out the city. There were all kind of water transportation from the large cruise ships, and commercial water buses (vaporetto), to private boats and water taxis, with the most famous and romantic of all, the gondolas.
Foot traffic gathers around three famous bridges that cross the canal: the Rialto Bridge, the Ponte Degli Scalzi, and the Ponte dell'Accademia.
Churches are many as well. Some were built in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.
But the majority of the buildings here seem to be designed and build in the Renaissance and Classical styles of the sixteenth century.
We found a very nice market with fresh catch from the sea and very fresh produce brought over from shore, but they were a bit pricy. Everything is pretty expensive here anyways.
I forgot to mention that the tiny hidden room we stayed in Venice cost us one hundred sixty dollars a night ... :-(, and that's the cheapest that I found during the highest summer season.
Fresh fish and crustaceans caught and sold within a few hours in the morning everyday.
Fresh produce brought over from shore a couple hours away.
Tiny waterway with private boat docks are all over the city.
On the second day, we were happy to find a Chinese restaurant in Venice. It's the larger one of the two here that I had heard. A simple meal for 2 set us back sixty dollars.
We had to bite the bullets to dine here because we hadn't had any rice for almost a month here in Western Europe.
Merely a hundred feet to our hotel is the beautiful Santa Maria di Nazareth Church (known today as Scalzi).
The gondola ride is the same with a share taxi. You would find strangers who wants to share with you for the agreeable length of time from 20 minutes to 3 hours. It cost roughly about 90 dollars for a 20 minute ride. If you can find 3-4 people to share with you then you divide the sum to each rider accordingly. The same with 2-3 hour ride. It would cost a few hundred bucks among 5-6 riders. If you can't find any "friends", or you want yours to be a private party, then you have to foot the bills all alone.
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