.......We finally arrived at the beautiful Rialto Bridge, which the "padrona di casa" (AKA Angela, our "landlady", who rented the apartment to us), said it was just one minute walk away from there, and she was right! It was also only 5 minutes walk to St. Mark's Square. The apartment was certainly "no-frills" but suited our needs, since we were out most of the time anyway. I had spent a very long time online looking for an apartment in our budget that was close to everything, and I finally found one! And it was great to finally be there, tired after our 6 hour train ride from Rome to Venice, and after battling all the other tourists. The ordinary passenger boats in Venice are rather SLOW, but we took the fast EURO STAR TRAIN to get here, so 6 hours is really about 2 hours faster than other trains manage. The tourists from all nations were just packing into Venice as always, so naturally the transportation system (boats) were always filled to capacity and then some. Actually, as previously mentioned, this also applies to Rome, (except the "boat" part :-)