Europe Trip - Day 10

Day 10 - Venice, Italy

The canals here are really cool.

Who wants a gondola ride???

Racing down the streets of Venice

Ah... Venezia (Venice)

They have the coolest masks here... but they all remind me of "Eyes Wide Shut"... if you've seen that weird movie.


This is our "taxi" to Murano.


Italy.... WOOHOO!!


Going through the canals on the way to Murano to watch the glass blowing


Heating up the glass in the furnace.


Shaping the glass with these oversized tweezer looking things.

He made a flower vase first... and when they're done shaping it... they put a piece of paper up to it and it starts a fire. They're showing how hot the glass still is... and not to touch it!


Check out this glass horse... it was cool to watch him make it.

This is one of the "buses" that we had to ride in.

Cute little pizzeria that we ate at to get out of the heat.

Ah... this was so much fun!

They kept landing on mom too cuz she was holding the extra pack of crackers. :)

Looking out from the Rialto bridge.

Must be laundry day :)

Ah... I love it.

This place was so beautiful. I loved it. That cave looking thing is where the water first comes out of the ground from the mountains.

At dinner with my surprise cake. :)

I’m going to type this up tonight, but I’m so tired of dealing with slow Internet connections to actually put the other blogs up… I’m gonna post this tomorrow while I have lots of free time. ☺ Today was Venice day. Don took us to the train station… because Venice is about an hour train ride from here. He dropped us off and were stood on one platform and started second guessing ourselves about if we were on the right train… as usual. ☺ We thought we should be on the one next to us so we switched and jumped on that one. It wasn’t the one we were supposed to be on, but it wasn’t a big deal because that train went to Venice too. It just made more stops so it ended up taking us an extra 30 minutes to get out there. Once we got there…. We tried to hurry over to Saint Marcos square because that’s where Don told us we could get a ride over to Murano. We wanted to watch how the glass stuff was blown. The city does a promo thing to get tourist to go to the island to check out the glass blowing (and to hopefully buy something), so they with transport you there on a “taxi” for free, BUT you have to catch one of the “buses” to get back. That’s where they get you. They’ll take you out there for free, but then they make you pay for your way back. ☺ So we found the spot and they took us to the island. When we got there they showed us back to the area that they do the work. Apparently they don’t “work” on Saturdays, but they will do demonstrations for you. So the workers weren’t doing their normal work, but they did have a guy come show us what they do. It’s actually pretty cool to watch. They are very good at it… and they say that they start learning how to do it at a young age. After the demo… they take you to… what I guess would be a show room. Just different rooms with the stuff that they’ve made and hope you will buy. It was pretty cool stuff. Mom found a vase she liked, but they were asking for a lot of money for it, so she wasn’t going to get it, but the guy kept trying to haggle with dad for it. Finally mom wandered off and had me go back in to tell dad that she said no. ☺ That’s we avoid confrontation in our home. HA! We finally got out there and headed for the “buses”. They leave about every 10 minutes, so we had to wait. When it finally came, we boarded and headed back to Venice. We were told by the guy on land that you pay for the bus when you get on it, but there wasn’t anyone to take money… and we didn’t know who to ask… so we accidentally were stowaways I guess. ☺ Oh well. Once we got back to Venice… we had been so tired and thirsty so we went to find somewhere to eat. It was a HOT, humid day… so I was kinda awnery too. I felt bad once I had gotten out of the heat and got a bit of water in me. We ate at this little pizzeria we found just off Saint Marco’s Square. Then we grabbed some gelato (yummy) and headed to the middle of the square so I could feed the pigeons. ☺ I was pretty excited to do that. They used to have people who sold bird food in the square, but weirdly enough I guess they don’t anymore… or they didn’t today at least. So we had stolen some crackers from the pizzeria just so I could feed the birds. I enjoyed it. It was really fun for me. By that time we had to hurry back to the train station to catch our train back. So we rushed back as fast as we could… but still managing to probably take the long way… and left. Don was there to pick us up and he drove us back. Along the way he gave us a bit of a tour of a couple cool places… including a gorgeous spot where the water comes out from under the ground from the mountains for the first time. I loved this place. It was so pretty. We went back to the house to grab Carrie and go to dinner. Don and Carrie took us out for a graduation dinner for me. They’re so sweet. I love them to death. They took us to this really good Italian restaurant called Le Masiere… and even managed to surprise me with a Black Forrest Chocolate cake. We just kinda sat around and talked… then finally headed back to the house. Everyone was a bit tired, so we chatted on the webcam with some family for a bit… then slowly everyone meandered off to bed… which is what I really need to be doing right now… so au revoir!