Venice

Thursday
Venice is one of those cities that you love the minute you arrive.  How can you not love a city where public transportation runs along the grand canal?  So, of course, part of our tour was done via "metro"....

When we got to our hotel, they said they needed an hour to get the room "ready", so we grabbed a quick lunch.  When our room was "ready", we were greeted by this:

I was so excited and impressed.  Then, I realized why they did that...TINY room.  We are talking smallest yet, and they were all small.  But whatever, I'll take it!

We spent the rest of the day milling around, then ended up at Harry's Bar for dinner drinks:

This was one of Mark's big requests, so we did it.  But, it was expensive and not worth it.  If you MUST go (like Mark), I recommend gettting ONE drink and then heading to dinner somewhere else.  If you are indifferent (like me), skip it!

We headed back to our hotel and had a romantic evening on the hotel's back stoop.  We had a nice little view of one of the small canals, where we watched tourists pass on gondolas and italian teenagers speed by on small motor boats.

Friday

We spent our last day in Italy milling around Venice and visiting St Mark's Cathedral:

Followed by a gondola ride:

  

And dinner and drinks, where we made friends with a nice french couple (I learned that women in France make less than men who share the exact same title and years of experience as them...crazy).

Whew!  And THAT was our big trip!  Now, I'm ready for some R&R...in the form of a weekend at the lake and some time off for my knee surgery on Wednesday.