Day 9 - Venice and the Cruise Ship Odyssey

We had breakfast in the Hotel Santa Marina and set off for a quick morning in Venice. We took an elevator up to the top of the Campinela (not sure of the spelling) tower and got a grand tour of Venice from a bird's eye view. It was beautiful. We had an audio guide that told us about each direction. It is always worth it to pay for the audio guide wherever you are. I saw lots of tours with women guides shouting in shrill voices and no one paying attention to them.
We did a little shopping, and I got two leather purses for a good deal. We ate lunch, packed up and arranged to share a water taxi with five others. We spotted our ship and oh was I excited.

After checking in just like on a plane, we were shown our beautiful room. There on the table was a large beautiful fresh flower arrangement. It was sent to us by our travel agent who got our train tickets, we didn't even book the cruise through her!

Bye, bye Venice, hello cruising!!!

Breakfast - cold selections at the hotel
Lunch - seafood salad with shrimp, calamari, octopus and other fish. It was very good.
Dinner - I picked the cruise based on the food ratings, so everything is amazing. I could write a whole blog about the food, but I will just include the highlights. Now I am sure they will have to roll us off of this amazing boat at the end of our trip.

Parma ham & mesculin salad, mustard crusted scallops, scallion potato ragout, caramelized pearl onions and chanterelles along with these really addicting long skinny break sticks and rolls

The ship holds 450 guests and is very high class. Every room has a balcony and a suite. The common areas are beautiful. Mark took a bath (which he never does at home) when we got in our room because he couldn't believe you could do that on a boat! It is never crowded anywhere and there is a good mix of ages.