This morning, while the girls were sleeping,  I woke up early to write the blog and then went out into the little streets of our neighborhood in search of a cafe.   It was nice to see locals going to work and shop owners starting to open shop.  The tourists will descend later on in the morning, but not quite yet. Obviously, I realize that we are tourists, and there is nothing bad about tourists.  But we live in New York City where we are bombarded by 56 million tourists a year.  So when we go anywhere on vacation, we try to stay in uncrowded places.   Last year, we found the perfect apartment in Paris and I think we’ve been really lucky so far in Italy.  Venice is super crowded, but our little apartment is in a fairly un-touristy area, so we are happy.

That balcony is off of one of…