Ahhh... Venice

Yesterday was a total whirlwind.

We landed in Munich a couple minutes early and were through customs with our bags and meeting our car service driver within 20 minutes of landing. German efficiency at its finest.

We made a bee line for our hotel to check in; drop our bags; and pick up Michele only to find when we got there that Michele had already gone over to the Welt.

The Welt is an amazing place and they've redone it a little since the last time we've been there. Now, it's a complete brand center for all of the brands under the BMW umbrella; including Mini, Rolls Royce, and the new BMWi sub-brand.

The actual delivery experience is top shelf. Our associate, Alexander, was very thorough and you could tell that he really enjoys his job. He's a classic BMW owner and his personal collection consists of a '94 E34 5 Series and a 97 840i. Nice garage.

The car is a stunner. Estoril Blue in person is just gorgeous. It took me a little while to find a nice seating position. The steering wheel feels like it telescopes much farther out than the previous 3er. Either that or I am just adjusting to the extra length of the new car and don't have to slide it out as far anymore.

We had a nice dinner at the Augustinerkeller with all of the FC Bayern fans who were downtown to celebrate their Bundesliga championship.

When we got back to the hotel, I was so tired I couldn't sleep. It took me several hours to fall asleep and today was a loooong day of driving to get to our first official stop...

Our route of travel took us over country roads to Zell am See, Austria, where I was going to make an executive decision as to whether we would go over the Grossglockner and risk (a) snow, and (b) visibility so poor as to make it a total waste of time. I wound up choosing to take a parallel route a little west of there and went _through_ the mountains rather than _over_ them. I think it was a wise choice. We had decent weather most of the way, but you could tell that at higher elevations, it was very cloudy.

We had lunch in a very smoky restaurant in a town called "Matrai in Osttirol" with a couple families there celebrating "Muttertag." I enjoyed my wienerschnitzel, and Michele had what appeared to be a take on "Porkchop Cordon Bleu" that was quite good.

We got to Marghera around 6:15pm and met Lorenza, the proprietress of our hotel. It didn't take long before we hopped a train over to Venice and made our way to find a place to have dinner. We found ourselves in a nice pizzeria off the beaten path (but packed with Americans, go figure). It was excellent and you'd never believe that it was anything other than a locals hangout.

The compulsory gelato followed suit with a rainy walk back to the train station and back to our hotel. I sure hope I sleep better tonight. The Ambien should help out with that, I think.

The weather is not so great here right now, but the forcast for tomorrow is for sun and a high near 70. We'll see how that plays out, but I sure hope it's right because I found out that my water-proof hoodie is only a little water-proof.