Venice Thursday 15 May, Day 22

Woke this morning to the sound of birds and bells. Dorsoduro is wonderfully quiet - no traffic noise apart from the occasional motor launch down the San Trovaso Canal, and the only sounds footsteps, voices, birds and bells. The little boats often have a dog on board, sometimes a silent dignified figurehead and sometimes enjoying the watery echo of its barking.

Today we set off to explore Venice and see if we could decode the Vaporetti water bus system. We decided we'd buy weekly tickets on the basis that we will likely use the vaporetti every day. First one we caught terminated at San Marco, which was already a solid mass of people. Got a map showing the ferry routes, the caught one to Lido and then one back along the grand canal. A nice, relatively comfortable and economical way to get a tour of Venice.  Had a nice salad for lunch - we are feeling a bit over-carbed, then got pleasantly lost getting back to the hotel as our known route was blocked off for bridge works.

Anne settled down for a siesta, while I headed out for a walk back over past San Marco through the dense crowds and on to the Arsenal, where many of the ships which transported the Fourth_Crusade on to devastate Constantinople were built. The first assembly line in history probably. What a different world it would be had the Venetians been less efficient in organizing and building that fleet.

Caught a vaporetti back, then wandered along by the waterfront, and watched a huge cruise ship carving its way through the bustling water traffic. So much of Venice seems still to be medieval scale, the sight of something so vast and modern seemed weirdly incongruous.

We shared a bottle of local wine  up on the little terrace on the roof of the hotel with an American couple who are staying here. The warmth and light at the end of the day was very relaxing.  Anne and the American lady compared knee ailments and we discussed cultural over-saturation - the too many Madonnas not another church syndrome and ways to approach it. Some of the artworks we've seen are so marvellous that you want to stop right there and not see another thing.  This is what we're learning to do.

Headed off to yet another lovely dinner, followed by an icecream, and then getting creatively lost yet again. The upside of this episode of navigational embarrassment was the discovery of the closest thing we've seen to a supermarket in Italy. It was very entertaining. Supermarket culture seems like another modern invention which doesn't quite fit in Venice.

Tomorrow we want to get out and over to San Marco's before the crowds descend. We have a plan!