Haber Travel Report-Venice Day 1

Dear Readers,

The Habers once again are on the road.  The trip started badly to say the
least.  As most of you know, my mother-in-law had hip replacement surgery
last week and is currently in rehab at NY Hospital; my father-in-law is
scheduled for cataract surgery in the only eye that has minimal vision due
to his macular degeneration (& no vision in the other eye).  Talk about
guilt about leaving at this point but since the trip was planned a year ago,
we left them in the very able care of stressed out Sarah.  An hour before we
were scheduled to leave home, we got a call from CitiBank that our VISA
number had been stolen!  We made arrangements (not totally satisfactory)
about how to handle the situation (too long and boring to go into here);
yes, we could use AmEx but you know how we treasure our miles from VISA!
Then 15 minutes before we were ready to leave, the car service called to say
they didn’t have a car!  They were testing us; Marty was ready to call it
quits on the trip but here we are…

I must say that from there it got considerably better.  We got a cab easily,
got to the airport in plenty of time (even with lots of traffic), flight to
Brussels was fine and so was our connection to Venice.

We are staying at the Europa-Regina; an old hotel that’s been refurbished.
We’re right on the Grand Canal.  In fact, we took a water taxi straight from
the airport to the hotel; that was very cool; a 14 seat motor boat just for
us.  We have a partial view of the canal from our room.  The room is not
especially big; the bathroom is huge; almost the size of the room itself.

After checking in (& dealing with the VISA issue as instructed and you don’t
really think that went smoothly at first, do you?), I actually allowed Marty
a short nap.  I’ve learned that a short nap will allow for more
sightseeing!!  Venice is as charming as I remember it from 1969; yes, it’s
been 37 years since we were here last.  However, there are hordes of
tourists; I can’t imagine what it must be like in July or August.  Also
there are all the really high end stores you find in NY; one street felt
like 5th Avenue but most of the others were typical European small winding
streets.

Since we were still jet lagged, the tour leader took pity on its group
(limited in size as it is).  We walked to the Palazzo Grazzi which is an old
palace from the 1700’s which has been purchased by a wealthy man named
Pinault so he could install his very modern art collection.  This exhibit
just opened; found it in the Times; not in the tour books yet (but Haber
Tours tries to be au courant)  The exhibit wasn’t exactly my taste (too
modern–Jeff Koons, Don Flavin, Damien Hirst) but that’s OK and probably the
only modern art we will encounter on this trip.

I allowed Marty to have another short nap and then we went to dinner at a
restaurant recommended to us by the surgeon who just did some minor surgery
on Marty (for those of you who don’t know about this excitement, the biopsy
came back perfectly clean).  Most of the restaurants here specialize in
seafood; this one has no seafood.  We shared a lovely plate of pasta with a
white meat sauce; really good.  Then I had veal liver Venician style; looked
really odd (almost unappetizing) on the plate but was fabulous.

So that’s the beginning.  It’s Saturday morning here and we’re off for our
first full day of touring.  More to come when time permits (& Marty isn’t
hogging the computer; excuse me, checking his work e.mail; someone has to
work I suppose!!)

Comments and responses to the Haber Report are always appreciated.

Love,
Your Faithful Correspondent