Adventures in Italy

Front of our hotel, along the Grand Canal


On the bridge the afternoon we arrived in Venice


View from our hotel window

Our tour was planned through Gate 1 travel. It was a great tour and I would recommend this travel group to anyone.
We flew into Venice on Sunday morning. The plane ride wasn't too bad...but it was hard. About 8 1/2 hours. I slept 4 or 5 hours, so that was better than most. Flying over the Alps was AMAZING!!! It was the most beautiful site I have ever seen. As far as the eye could see was huge mountains with snow caps. Every once in a while you would see a small village below. Ahhhh, what a great first site to see.
Venice had so much fog that we had to circle the airport for about 30 minutes. Tony and I had both dozed off and all of the sudden it felt like we had a hit of turbulence, but no, we had landed. Weirdest landing ever. Everyone was shocked when they realized we had touched down. We had to meet our travel group, but the fog was so bad that they had to arrange for bus transportation as opposed to a boat. But at least we made it! A lot of people on our tour group coming from other places couldn't even land in Venice and had to land in Milan, or have a delayed flight.
Our hotel was great! The Principe. And it had a beday...we didn't use it though, it just looked awkward and uncomfortable. Originally we weren't going to do the tour in Venice, we were just going to wing it on our own, but we changed our minds on Sunday night and went ahead with it on Monday morning. Our first stop was Murano Island. I didn't know anything about this place before we went, but apparently Murano Glass is HUGE! We got to go into the oldest glass making factory and watch a man blow glass. It was cool, and then we got to go to the showroom and look around. It was PRICEY!! I was nervous just walking around. This piece was $20,000 Euros!


After Murano we went to the Doge's Palace. It was so huge and beautiful. Our tour guide for the Palace was Sylvia, a real Venetian. She was great and so tiny! I learned so much on this tour. It was great seeing all the artwork..even the staircases were works of art. St. Mark's Basilica wasn't as impressive as I had hoped though. St. Mark's square was cool, it's in the opening scene of The Italian Job.