Ah, Venice!!!

Well, we enjoyed our day in Paris and flew to Italy on Sunday morning. If you know anything about flying in Europe or Italian customs please help. When we landed, all the passengers clapped their hands. Perhaps they made an announcement, in Italian, about the engine dying or something, but I thought that the clapping was strange. If that is common, will someone please let me know.

We took the train to Venice. And all I can say is WOW. Venice was the place that I was looking forward to the least and it blew me away. I got off the train and it looked fake, because I didn't think that anything could look like that. Of any picture I have ever seen of Venice, none have done it justice. If you ever need about 100 photos of Venice, just ask, we've got them.

Our little hotel was just a few steps away from St Marks Square. If you ever have the chance, go there at night time. There were 3 "dueling orchestras" playing Italian opera at different areas in the square. It was great.

We also were able to go on a gondola ride. For the women, it is as romantic as they say it is. For the men, it is a cool ride, and I even found a soccer ball floating in the canal.

We had delicious risotto, pasta, and pizza - and lots of gilato. Nicolle is confident that she will gain the needed weight to have a baby.

It was the gondolas regatta on Sunday. Basically, it was like NASCAR for the Gondola community, and they had tons of people there to watch it. It was fun to see the different people there to cheer on the race- kind of like the annual canoe race at boy scout camp... they are all paddling and not very many of them have showered in the last week.