Venice

I think this was everyone’s most fascinating city…there are no cars, you either walk or take boats to get around.  We asked our gondolier how someone might get transported to a hospital….without a pause his reply was of course by boat, same with the fire department and police.  Interesting!  We had a such a short time in Venice, so we only saw a small amount of sights: Marco Polo square, St. Mark’s basilica, bridge of sighs and Regent bridge/canal.

The girls’ highlight was Venice they couldn’t stop talking about their Venetian masks and loved taking the gondola around the city.  

Nichole and I were able to steal away one evening for a semi romantic walk around the city and we managed to catch a beautiful firework show off the Adriatic Sea standing on a bridge over a canal…had we not been so tired I’m sure the moment would have sunk in a little bit further.  We also listened to a lovely live instrumental of Somewhere Over the Rainbow using a piano, violin, cello and accordion, while listening to the midnight chime of the St. Mark’s bell tower….ahh Venice!

So if you’ve been following this whole Italian trip, you’ve got to be asking what else happened?!  Well, let’s just say we were stranded on the docks of Venice with no place to stay, we tried for hours trying to reach our point of contact finally reaching the person who helped book the trip.  Three hours later we managed to get into our apartment, we skipped dinner (we thought we would be picked up then we would go out)….we did manage to watch a beautiful sunset though!

Of course our trip ended with one last problem – Nichole and I had purchased a beautiful oil painting and we managed to leave it in the Venice airport and we couldn’t make a claim on it until we reached Kiev!  What an irreplaceable loss!