Venice

This is our last day of our tour part of the trip. And I have to admit I am so done with taking tours.....I think if you are to come to this country, you need to either study the history first, or take a tour. I recommend the tours. We have enjoyed them tremedously, but I am tired. Every morning we are going by 8:00am and don't return until after 6:00pm. Then, take a shower, and try to catch someplace to eat before 8:00, so we can get back to the hotel and get to bed early to do this all over again.

Tomorrow we leave for 8 days to Tuscany where we rented a villa in the countryside, I am looking forward to maybe being able to pull out a book and read and just enjoy the views of this country without a tour guide pointing everything out.

We arrived in Venice yesterday in the early afternoon. We took a train ride from Florence to the train station and then a "water taxi" to our hotel, which is located directly on the grand canal. Out of all the places that we have been so far, this is by far my favorite. I am not sure what it is that attracts me to this place, but it is beautiful. There are no cars on Venice, you must walk everywhere. There are over 400 bridges that connect all the waterways throught the city and the "dry land". No bridge looks the same and all are beautifuly ordained with rod iron or marble.

As I was saying before, everything is by boat. They have police boats, ambulance boats, bus boats, and taxi boats. They have boat stops all along the canal which are just like bus stops, people wait in line and the next thing you see is this large boat coming up to this stop and 25 people will get off and 25 people will get on. We actually have one located next to our hotel and last night we sat outside with some cocktails and just watched it. Truly amazing.

We did not have a tour yesterday (thank god), so we unpacked, and took a walk on our own, just to see the sights. We then took a gondola ride. That was the one thing that I wanted to do, and I did it! It was fabulous. For 45 minutes we went in and out of many waterways and saw some georgeous (as they call them) Palaces, and private homes, with some champagne and music. Can we get any more romantic than that!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Today we had a walking tour of the city which the guides are so good at telling us the history of these places, and seeing some of the sights that most tourists don't see. We then took a tour of the murano glass factory and saw how vases, glasses, chandeleirs are made. They are all hand made and hand blown. Because this was a special ocassion, they gave us a souvenier of a horse, which we saw the designer make!!! They wrapped it up so well that I don't think we will have a problem at all bringing it back in one piece. I did want to buy some wine glasses, but yeah......they were 750 euro's for 6 of them (which was the minimum order). This is about 1,300.00 in american money. Sorry murano, maybe some other time!

Everything is so expensive here. Our lunch which will consist of a pizza, and a bottle of water is about 25 euros or 20 dollars. It is crazy. I'm hoping when we get to Tuscany, my debit card can rest for a bit. Ha ha

I am excited for our next journey, but also a little sad that it is half over. I can't believe that we have been here for 7 days already, it is just flying by. Hopefully in Tuscany we will have wifi capability, if you don't see any posts, you will know that we don't.

I have attached some pictures of Venice, but truly the pictures do not do this place justice.

Talk to you soon

Chao