About Venice -- my wife Diane couldn't have said it better (although I will add a little more later):

Venice was cold (we actually had snow, which they haven't seen in 50 years), full of students on Easter break, and not like anywhere I've ever been. I thought it would be more like Amsterdam--canals and roads--but nope, only water. ... It's wild. You catch a vaporetto, or canal boat, to get around; they're all numbered, like buses (the #82 to Piazza San Marco!), and it really is cool to sail everywhere.

The city is beautiful in that Italian-distressed way that they always try to copy in design magazines. We saw lots of cherub-genre art, some modern art at the Peggy Guggenheim Museum, a bunch of churches, and a lot of cool neighborhoods. We ate pretty well (got addicted to Venetian cookies, which we have nothing like in London) and loved the atmosphere of the restaurants and cafes. If you want to know what Italy smells like in the morning, stick your head in a bag of Stella d'Oro and inhale--that hit of sugar and anise! I also shopped more than I should have, but prices were good and everything's so beautiful.

I'll get around to Venice, but first ... the Florence Nightingale Museum. This small museum is dedicated to the life and times of -- you guessed it -- Florence Nightingale, who is generally recognized as the founder of modern nursing (and, as it turns out, nursing schools).

Diane, Jay and I went there today -- Easter Monday, as they call it -- because the weather was uncertain enough to make us doubt our original plan to go to Kew Gardens.

This museum is one of the many small museums of London, many of which deserve a visit.

The exhibition focuses on her expedition to Turkey during the Crimean War of the 1850s to address an appalling situation -- more British soldiers were dying of disease and wounds than on the battlefield. She and others cleaned up the hospitals, introduced general principles of sanitation and did everything they could to make wounded or ill soldiers and sailors lives better.

After the war, Nightingale used the celebrity she gained from her Crimean War work to improve health care in Britain and India, and started a nursing school at St. Thomas's Hospital, which sits across the Thames from the Houses of Parliament. The museum is located in a lower floor of the hospital, and a statue of Nightingale can be found in its grand Governors Hall.

Here's a fun fact. Florence Nightingale is named for her birthplace: Florence, Italy (does that make her Italian?).

For more information on Florence Nightingale, see the museum Web site at www.florence-nightingale.co.uk.

After that, we went for a walk along the South Bank of the Thames, passing:
-- Under the Hungerford Bridge
-- Royal Festival Hall
-- Under Waterloo Bridge, where you can find scores of used books for sale and the Film Centre Cafe, which is, as they say, cheap and cheerful
-- the National Theatre
-- Gabriel's Wharf (small shops and restaurants)
-- Oxo Tower (stopped at E.A.T. for coffee and cake)
-- Under Blackfriars Bridge

We went into the Tate Modern Museum, which has a great, arts-oriented gift shop.

After that, we went to one of my favorite pubs, the Founders Arms. It's a modern pub but it has a great view of the Thames and decent pub grub. Jay had bangers (sausages) and mash (mashed potatoes). I had fish and chips (fries). Diane had "Thai" fish cakes, which she said contained more potato than fish. Oh well.

I've written about the Founders Arms before. It's a Youngs ales pub, meaning it has good beer and good food.

After that, we took the RV1 bus, a riverside route that took us back to Waterloo Bridge then back across the Thames to the Strand. From there, we caught the No. 13 bus to Swiss Cottage and home. And the end of a great, four-day Easter holiday weekend.