Three hours later I am on my way to the airport. I feel quite fresh after over 2 hours sleep. At 5am in the morning the M25 is quiet and the journey speedy. Everything moves smoothly at the airport with time for a cooked breakfast and off we go. I have some vauge feeling that there was some delay along the way but I wasn't in a rush and really can't remember anything specific, maybe it was fussing around trying to get euros from the unresponsive bank machine, or queueing for a boat ticket to Venice. My Lloyds bank card wouldn't give me any money and I was getting a bit worried as I had only 7 euros. Fortunately my John Lewis credit card was more forthcoming (more on this later). Its around midday local time and hot. The boat journey is quite pleasant although I think I'm beginning to doze off at times. Non-sense is quite close. I have looked at a map; I know where I am going; The boat stops at San Zaccarlia just near St Mark's square, most people get off, is this the end of the line, should I get off; no I know the san marco stop is at the other end of the square. Fortunately this is true. I wander through the streets heading for where I think my hotel is, and behold it appears in front of me, quelle surprise! (I know that's french, I can only do 'Prego' in Italian).

The hotel is very nice (with the view above). The reservation is fine, the facilities everything I need, the staff polite and efficient. I really can't find any blemish with this hotel at all (not that I'm trying to). So I just have a little sleep. When I wake it has clouded over and looks rather thundery. I pop out to have a fairly random stroll. Seem to have missed lunch somewhere so have a bit of tarte and a capuccino vaguely behind San Marco and an ice cream somewhere else.  The heavens open. It reminds me of London 24 hours previously, but warmer.

I see that the stage being built in the piazza san marco is huge. (Not pictured yet, see tomorrow).

Back to the hotel. Just relaxing in the bath when I get a phone call from Lloyds bank security department telling me they have thwarted some devilish criminal who has tried to use my debit card in Italy. I am not amused. Every week I get huge amounts of worthless correspondence from Lloyds Bank, and only the day before I left, I got a special notice informing me that they were increasing their charges for foreign withdrawls again. Nowhere in any of this vast environmental decadence do they bother mentioning that you can't use your card in Italy. Having established that there is quite a strong possibility that it is indeed the account holder they are speaking to, they reluctantly agree they might let me have some cash. How different to the John Lewis credit card people who phone 5 mins later to confirm that it was me who withdrew money from a cash machine in Venice.

At least I may be ok for cash now. Resturants in Venice are not cheap. I stroll around looking for reasonably priced quality. I manage to find one that looks adequate with Capaccio on offer. I also try the ravioli soup and the venetian calves liver. The capaccio is excellent, the other two are a little salty. Actually I am rather full by the liver arrives and I'm not sure I was able to appreciate it as I would have done with more appetite. Overall ok rather than special. Anywhere in France I would have expercted to pay 20 - 25 euros for the meal, here it was around 50 euros. By the end of the meal I am beginning to aclimatise to the language and am sucessful with my prepared phrase 'Il conto per favore'. Dining alone is a strange experience and one which I am initially unsure of; on this occasion I passed the time between courses by phone blogging (as some of you will know). In fact the only real thing to regret about eating alone is that I can only try half as many items of the menu as I could if I had an adventurous companion. On the other hand the cost of the meal would also be double.

Back to hotel, consider a quick nightcap in the bar, but after a quick glance at the guidebook wake up still in my clothes 2 hours later. No sign of knife weilding dwarves in red dufflecoats :-) or Julie Christie :-(