Well, what a big day we had today.

We woke early and got a good start on the day. It was a 2.5 hour drive to Venice and we wanted to get there as early as possible. We were on the road by 8:00 and heading for Italia.

We arrive in Venice at 10:30, right on time, and after waiting half an hour to get into the car park, we took a private boat transfer to our hotel, the Westin Europa and Regina, and were here just before midday. The hotel was nice enough to leave us a birthday cake and bottle of prosecco to celebrate my birthday, which has now served me well for the past 3 weeks.

First port of call, a recommendation from our concierge on a good restaurant for lunch. He recommended 2 places and we chose Vino Vino. This was a great suggestion and a good way to kick off the Italian portion of our trip. The meal was excellent and well complemented by a glass of prosecco, which it turns out, is made in the Veneto region.

After lunch we went looking for glass and Venetian masks. We found the glass we wanted, but were unimpressed with any of the mask selections. It seems that most of the shops now sell cheap plastic masks made in China. A real shame that it is difficult to find genuine Venetian masks in Venice.

We asked our concierge where to find genuine Venetian masks and he recommended a place called Ca Del Sol. We were pressed for time because we were booked on a Food and Wine tour at 5:00, but we hot-tailed it to the mask shop to check it out.

We found the place and it was absolutely incredible. Thousands of masks, puppets and walking sticks in there, all made by a family that has been doing it for 29 years. One of the family members was there and he was making a mask behind the counter.

There were so many masks that we fell in love with, we could have bought 20 of them. We settled on 3, organised postage and were ready to go to our Food and Wine tour.

By this time it was 4:35 and we had 25 minutes to meet our tour guide way across the other side of Venice. You can't just jump in a taxi, so I had to use my best navigational skills and, map in hand, we proceeded to make our way to the meeting point by foot. Venice streets are like a maze and the maps really are not much help, since many of the streets aren't on the maps and many of the streets don't have street signs. However, using my knowledge of the streets from our previous 2 trips here and the philosophy of "heading in the right direction", we took off at a blistering pace, dodging tourists with alacrity and stopping every now and then to get our bearings. We made it to the meeting point with 5 minutes to spare.

We were met by our tour guide, Simona, who took us and 6 other people on a tour of the non-tourist areas of Venice. We stopped at 5 cafes, bars and restaurants and sampled many local foods and wines. The first stop we tried baccala, which is basically rehydrated cod mixed with olive oil and spread on bread. Lidia declined since it brought back memories of her family making the stuff at Easter and she just couldn't get over the smell. I thought it was actually quite tasty. The tour ended with a dessert wine and tiramisu, which Simona claims was also invented in Venice.

Simona was also a wealth of information regarding the history and culture of Venice. For instance, we didn't know that the entire island is built on wooden pylons taken from the forests around Verona. The pylons were driven into the mud, then stone laid on top of them and the buildings built on the stone. Apparently tests have been done on the wood and they are still solid foundations, due to the fact that the wood has not rotted, but rather petrified due to the lack of oxygen.

We finished late, so came back to our hotel to enjoy a prosecco on the deck overlooking the grand canal. A prefect way to finish our first evening in Venice.