Sadly, we brekky together and leave Ortisei, which we understand from vague news reports may now be renamed Ortrumpei by an act of Congress. We pay up, load the car, and drive to Bolzano to see Otsi the Iceman.

We try to travel south into the heart of Bolzano without much trouble, but are challenged to find a parking space near where we think the Archeological Museum is. We ask a man on the street who points around a corner and we use up a smidge of our travel luck and pull into a small parking lot where a car is just leaving. We use up a little more of our travel luck when another couple explain how to use the parking payment machine after our first 8 or 9 attempts. All good. Stroll along a path lined with plum trees … joggers, dog walkers, and a few streets later we’re at the museum.

The exhibit is about 10 times more interesting and comprehensive than we expected: very informative signage in English tells us about the geology of Otsi’s time, the climate, social structure, etc. The info about him and his trappings — clothes, bow and arrows, quiver, tools in a pouch — is extensive. As is the story of his murder by arrow and blow to the head (possibly not simultaneous). Why?

That … nobody knows.

Although the couple who find him are Italian, Austria claims the discovery. Ultimately Italy wins.

On his body are tattoos which mark acupuncture locations.

All very interesting!

We leave Balzano and try to travel back to Venezia Maestre by a different routs than the way we went to Ortisei, but Google maps has other ideas and we end up taking highways to the gas station near the Sixt car rental return spot where our travel luck deserts us and we spend a good 10 minutes figuring out how to pay for a tank of gas. We learn that you put cash (or card with fixed euro limit) in a machine and choose the bay you will use. The gas will flow up to the limit set.

We deposit the car, train to Venezia S.L., stop for strawberry gelato crowned with a chocolate disk, and exit the station, hunting for the 7-day vaporetto pass ticket counter.

Done. But … of course … there are dozens of vaporetto stops — floating covered platforms where you cue for a 25-foot water bus — and it takes us a while to learn how to read the myriad maps and signs … but we finally agree — and fervently hope — that Dock E, vaporetto #1 in the Lido direction to stop St. Stae in the Santa Croce sestiere (think arrondisement) will get us 50 meters from the “rear” entrance to our hotel Al Ponte Mocenigo.

We’re correct and, after snapping hundreds of photos along the Grand Canal, most of which we’ll discard later, we get there. Aren’t we the seasoned travelers?

We enter the St. Stae church at our “vapo-stop” that, we learn later, is almost never open. Simple Baroque but not heavily decorated and empty. Lovely, hello Venice.

We do the registration thing, drop bags, and hit the streets, rather than the canal, to walk around, acclimate, and get dinner.

We are charmed by it all. We find a canal-side spot for dinner — gondolas waft by on a thin canal and a seagull attacks and devours a pigeon right in front of us, and a sparse stream of international tourists, singly, in pairs, in families, in groups pass by — and life is good.

Veni, vidi, vici. Good night and good luck.