no, these prices are not a joke

Well, after a taxi ride, 2 train rides, and a vaporetto, we have arrived in venice! By the way, I do not like the "compartment" style trains or the way they seat you facing instead of next to your traveling companion. Like, for part of the trip we were in a compartment with 4 loud,fat, coughing Germans (though I'm not sure I'd know the difference between the hacking coughs and the german language). My ipod and numerous vitamin c lozenges didn't really help but fortunately they weren't with us the whole ride. But it's awkward and you can't really talk... But anyway despite the annoying compartments we made it to FREEZING cold venice - temps just dropped all over europe- and lucky us we had to board a vaporetto (water bus) at night, which took us on a lovely but cold as anything ride through the grand canal to our stop in san marco square. We were able to easily walk to our hotel from there and sharon you're totakky right - they have those shutters on the windows - good thing I have the alarm clock! Hehe. Anyway next we went in search of a quick bite to eat. Cindy remebered passing "Harry's Bar" on our way in and had heard it was famous or something so we wandered in there... Not reallu knowing what we were getting into. It looked casual enough at first by the bar so I thpught maybe it was seat yourself - but as I was asking, we were quickly asked if we were here for dinner and if we had a reservation. I said yes we were here for dinner, but we didn't have a reservation. He assured us he had a table "upstairs" for us. When they asked to take our coats (and by asked I mean insisted) we started to wonder... And then they seated us alone in a corner away from everyone else, and I started to notice they were all dressed better than we were. We laughed until we saw the prices... 27 euros for a bowl of soup. 40-some euros for a hamburger. Apparently we had stumbled upon one of venice's legendarily exhorbitant eateries. And the prices were amazingly not a joke. Well, we said, you only live once... We guessed we'd live on pizza the rest of the trip and indulged... What choice did we have? They had our coats! Anyway the food was just ok, which was sort of ridiculou for what we paid for it, and we didn't evem linger over our meal - so, well, it was kind of a rip off but rick steves says venice is expensive, just live it up. So upward and onward. Anyway now we're in the hotel and too broke to pay wireless charges so writing this update on the blackberry... More tomorrow when we have had more time in venice!