Day 3 - Venice

When you picture the most ideal day in Venice - playing by our rules, of course, which means being more of a local than a tourist - what do you picture? Maybe the sweetest local person, a third generation Venetian that actually speaks Venetian (it's different than Italian) comes to pick you up and offers you to stay in her house with original Terazza floors? And walking in her, mother is cooking fresh lunch (Oreccete) with bread and wine on the table. And you are greeted with kisses on the cheek? And what if her mother's cousin worked at a local espresso bar, who teases you while gifting you espresso (with a shot of grappa of course) while chatting like a regular?

Sound good? That's the past 7 hours of our life. And it got better...

After that, we jumped in their private boat and took a private tour of Venice! The Grand Canal, peeking through tiny alleys, while being serenaded by an official gondolier singer...her father...who wasn't really meaning to seranade us but he just always sings. He is sitting on the couch singing something right now as I type on Silvia's computer.

We then walked for hours upon hours through tiny streets, saying Ciao to various friends of Silvia, checking out supermarkets, joking, learning Venetian and Italian and having an amazing time!

A friend of Silvia's has been invited over and along with her parents we are going to do homemade pizza. Haha, I was just trying to converse with her mother and apparently we were talking about how she loves Salzburg and they say that it is a mini-Venice.

Rick Steves would be proud. Actually, he would pee his pants with excitement on how surreal and cool this all is...all because we sat next to someone at the Hofbrauhaus two years ago and started to talk...which turned to sharing a Struedel...

Time for snacks, then more touring in the morning, and then we leave for Ljubljana at 2:55 tomorrow for another first...Slovenia.

More on Venice later.

Tschuess!