After a lovely breakfast together, we vapo to St. Tomas church and meet Michael who takes us into the private home of the Pisani Moretta noble family. BIG house. First floor was used as a warehouse for the family’s traded goods.

Second floor was used to impress the hell out of whoever visited.

Third floor was living area and chapel. The whole place is empty now and on the block for a rumored 50 million euro. We leave and continue our walking tour of Venice as a mercantile empire with Michael.

We walk through the Gothic era, pass through the Byzantine, touch on parts of the HRE, and settle into the Ottoman for a good bit, stopping at Venice’s Arsenal, whose main door’s lintel commemorates (oversimplifying here) Venice and Catholic states’ naval defeat of the surging Ottoman Empire at the Battle of Lepanto in 1571.

A canal runs through the Arsenal and in its heyday, the Venetian navy could outfit 10 galleys every six hours. Think Henry Ford but you control everything that touches water from Gibraltar to Constantinople, plus a good bit of southern Europe.

We finish our tour at the Basilica di Santa Maria Della Salute, the very large church on the southern point of the Grand Canal. Cliff Notes version: Though originally conceived to represent Venice’s supreme power and glory by its size and exquisite architecture, it was seized by Napoleon when he “liberated” the city on May 12, 1797, ending Venice’s 1,100-year republic.

We pay Michael a very hefty sum and walk a few blocks to Peggy Guggenheim’s house, now a museum of her collected artworks (the dining room much today as it was when she lived there).

We have a drink and bite at the really expensive but very nice cafe and then wander around.

Just a few of many: Lipchitz, Micro, Kandinsky, Ernst (her husband), Gleizes, Noguchi, Magritte, Pollock and Picasso. We pay silent homage to the golden globe by Arnoldo Pomodoro because he died today, and silent homage to Ms. Guggenheim, buried nearby next to a plaque inscribed with all her dogs’ names.

We leave and get a vapo across the southern entrance of the Grand Canal to the Basilica di San Giorgio Maggiore, the “other” tall tower from which we wanted to take sunset photos of Venice in general and St. Marks in particular but the last elevator up — the only way to get to the top of the tower now — is at about 5:30 and down is 6:00.

From the tower’s top, we try to spot where Jeff Bezos may have his wedding ‘cause it’s rumored it might be in San Maggiore’s grounds, which contain a truly beautiful privet maze BTW, but no joy and the afternoon haze starts to build so we make our watery way back to our hotel, shower, change and walk about 200 feet to a small restaurant. We elect to eat inside.

At a table near us, a couple with clear Aussie accents. We chat and Grainger and Katrina say they’ve just come to Venice from the Dolomites. From Ortisei! They’re celebrating her birthday tonight!

They were in Sella Pass, the same place we were on our last day! In fact, they took the “coffin ride” to the top and hiked down the back side that Darrel looked at and thought, “Oh steep ….”

As they were hiking down, he was leading and she was inching over a large bolder, just setting her foot onto a path in the narrow trail of scree when her foot starts to slide over the edge.

She plants her pole but it won’t hold in the scree and she tries to push away from the edge but the slope is too steep and her momentum takes her tumbling over the edge.

Breaks her collarbone in her first drop and then tumbles, rolling down the steep slope, shredding arms and legs against razor sharp rocks until she jams against a lone small tree, its trunk the size of a table leg.

Her husband, a few other hikers, scramble down, horrified, blood everywhere. “Don’t move!” Frantic calls.

The rescue helicopter comes in 7 minutes and whisks her to a hospital; her husband having to get there on his own. 100 stitches in her leg., overnight in the hospital, and strong advice to go home immediately for further care and future PT. Needless to say, she’s on so many meds that she cannot drink alcohol. Needless to say, Grainger, being Aussie, drinks her share as well as his.

Our food arrives and we commiserate and tuck in. We decide, when the Aussies’ meal ends, we’ll buy him a grappa and her a tiramisu for her birthday. And they move to our table and we’re all Aussies for the rest of the evening.

And thankfully … safely … we sleep through the night.