Nous sommes rendus á Rome et pas d'internet dans notre chez nous. Voici le lien sur Airbnb.

http://abnb.me/EVmg/M4ypy99XVC

Je vais faire des notes pour le blogue mais je ne peux pas les télécharger. :(

Update...

Thur May 4

We finally woke up at 12h after making up for the sleep missed during our flight.

Our apartment is great, clean, fully equipped and in a convenient but not too central location.

We spent the afternoon walking a loop as described by Suzanne below. We returned home for supper than went to the train station and area and another loop through the neighbourhood near the station that led us to the Tre Archi (3 arches) bridge near home.

After some reading, correspondence and updating this blog, we took one last short walk and prepared for bed...

Suzanne;

Nous sommes dans le cartier Cannaregio à Venise. Un quartier à découvrir. Pour les amateurs d'art, il s'agit du quartier de l'artiste de la Renaissance Le Tintoret. Pour un petit pélerinage, nous pouvons voir sa maison au 3398 Fondamenta de Mori il y a vécu pendant 20 an ( 1574 – 1594).

Aussi, il est intéressant de voir ses oeuvres dans l'église Madonna dell'Orto.

Il est facile de s'approvisionner de produits locaux de qualité. L'épicerie de toute beauté est dans un ancien théâtre.

Fri May 5

We headed off to San Marco as much as possible by back streets, or calli, and made it without being too lost too much. This is our most enjoyable part of this visit to Venice, exploring the smaller less popular byways that may only be one block off of a main street, but where you meet mostly Venetiens and that are some what less turned towards tourists. For an explanation of how to properly name what we call streets, roads, etc have a look here:

http://www.thatsvenice.com/travel-guides/canals-bridges-calli-campi/

It is difficult to describe circulating here... the calli wander around in the most fantastic way. Some of them are dead-ends, some of them end at another pathway, many of them end at a canal and force you to circle back to find the one that ends at a bridge across a canal. Labyrinth is the word that applies ! Evidently they change names, often at each intersection or curve and they funnel into sections hardly large enough for 2 people to pass then suddenly open on to wider routes or small or larger squares  (called camp, which are never square!) often with a sealed well head in the center.

This is the end of our calli... best not to come home drunk and miss the door...

Plaza San Marco was wall to wall tourists and tourists feeding pigeons, we stayed long enough to see the giants on the Clock Tower ring in 1pm and watch the mechanical hour change.

This is a fantastic mechanical device, the 3 giants on the roof strike the bell with there hammers on the hour, worth reading about...

Then we made our way to the Academia Bridge on our way to to the Customs house where an important exhibition by Damien Herst is taking place. The section off San Marco is all expensive restos and more expensive shops... all the brand names that one recognises from the Lives of the Rich and Famous (Prada, Louis Vitton, Chanel etc etc). The exhibit was something else... perhaps Suzanne will describe it.

The problem was that there were few places one could stop for a coffee or a glass of wine... we finally ate our sandwiches sitting at the bottom of a monument near the bridge. After the exhibit we found a café where we had a drink before taking the vaporetto back to our neighbourhood (we were both tired from some hours of walking). On the boat we found seats beside an Austrian couple just as we passed the house where the TV series Commisaire Brunetti filmed the family scenes of the Brunettis. The series we watched was a German production translated into French, so when I pointed the place out to Suzanne the couple joined in and were as excited as us to see this historic spot, given that they too watched the series.

At home we had supper and a nap and then a short walk not far from home, to the northern limit of the city were we could watch the vaporetti, speedboats, unique row boats (rowing is done standing up, there are 2 models, one with 2 rowers and another very much like the tourist gondolas but with at least 4 rowers) and the various other boats used to move things around Venise. We could also see planes landing and taking off from the airport and trains and cars crossing from Mestre to Venice on the causeway that is the only link to the city. For those that don't know, the only cars in Venice are in the parking lot at the end of the causeway at Plaza de Roma. From there you walk or take a boat.

Sat May 6

Today we leave for Rome. We left our apartment in the morning and walked to the Train Station, originally we thought we had to take a regional train to Mestre (which is the city on the mainland next to Venice), but we learned that our train originated in Venice ant that we could board it directly there. That left us with a couple of hours available that we spent sitting in front of the station watching the world go by.

Our train was a high-speed (touching 300 kph at one point), but then stopping in the country side between Florence and Rome because of “unauthorised people walking on the tracks”. This caused a 50 minute delay in arriving in Rome. We were able to text our contact so that she could adjust her schedule. The trip starts in flat agriculural country and then hills and finishes with many tunnels through the small mountains before Rome. We arrived at the Station Termini Roma and had about a 30 minute walk to our new apartment. It is really small a single room that is tiny kitchen, dining room and salon with a mezzanine bedroom and bathroom. After getting installed we explored our neighbourhood and found a nice bar terrace where we had snacks, beer and wine. Also we were directed to a grocery store where we stocked up for the next days.

 We had a drink on our terrace, which is an courtyard...

Here is the courtyard... you can almost see Suzanne on the left...

The neighbors were very friendly...