The Doge's Palace in Venice. This is where Casanova escaped prison. We even saw the prison cell he escaped from!

Here's the front of our hotel.

The Grand Canal in Venice!

Gondolier navigating the "streets"

Do you think they get tired of the hats?

This is our Gondolier.

Picture from our gondola ride

Going under the Rialto Bridge. Notice the painting toward the front of our gondola.

Grand Canal from Rialto Bridge

Older part of Venice

4.28.08 - A more difficult day.

We got up early to catch a water bus to the train station for our trip to Milan (or "Milano" according the train ticket guy that corrected me after pretending he didn't know what I said the first time.....Milan???? What's that??? You mean Milano??) This guy made VERY little effort to work with me in English. I tried the best I could, apparently not good enough for him.

On the water bus some guy literally pushed Brooke forward over her suitcase to get around her. He then complained to one of the bus employees about Brooke as he got off the bus boat. I just barely saw the incident and Brooke told me about it after the fact. Otherwise, I would have shoved the guy back. You KNOW if it was a guy in front of him, her wouldn't have done that. It was because shes a woman, and an easy target.

We got on our train for MilanO, which is about 3 hours from Venice, but since it was one of the regional trains it was a pleasant ride. We found the taxi line, took one to our hotel, dropped off our bags, and went on a search for lunch. Italian food is all we have had for the last two weeks so when we saw Burger King, we gave in.

Keep in mind the entire menu is in English.....because it's predominately an American fast food place.....

I walk up and say "Mozzarella Sticks..." She just gives me a confused look....and I point at the enormous lit up sign of mozzarella sticks over her shoulder and we move forward.....

Then I say "whopper with cheese" .....same thing, nothing. Brooke even says the word cheese in Italian, "formaggio" She throws her hands up in frustration and calls for a co-worker yelling "ENGLISH".

A guy walks up and we place the order again, which ends up wrong anyways! If you work for Burger King you need to know what the words on the menu are above your head, that are in English (Cheese, Whopper, Mustard, etc.)

After lunch we went back to the hotel and checked my email. Our travel agent emailed saying the orignal hotel we booked for Venice, that he had since canceled and switched to this other hotel, is trying to charge us a no show penalty of the FULL 3 NIGHTS. Travel agent says he canceled the reservation back in November, they say he didn't and will charge my Amex credit card. Funny thing is they don't even take Amex, so they there never should have been a booking in the first place. So now I have to watch out for a charge so I can dispute it.

I'm writing this before dinner so who knows what the rest of the day holds.....Tomorrow we get to see The Last Supper by Da Vinci!


4.27.08

IT'S MY BIRTHDAY, and what a place to be on my birthday! I turned 25 today and I decided that I will stop counting from here on out.

This morning we took a 'secret' tour of the Doge's Palace, the residence of each Venetian ruler. It was founded in the 9th century and is lined with marble all over the outside. The 'secret' part of this tour consisted of walking through the private apartments of the rulers, interrogation and planning rooms, torture chambers, and secret holding cells (including Casanova's). There are hidden passage ways all over this palace, some even through bookcases on the wall. The rest of the palace has vast hallways and rooms decorated with 24 carat gold, sculptures, and paintings. We also walked over The Bridge of Sighs (1600), built as a passage way for prisoners being led to trial.

After the palace, we at lunch at the American Bar. Ernest Hemingway used to frequent the place!

This evening we had a private gondola ride through the canals of Venice. It was incredible, floating through Venice pretty much the way it was for the last 300-400 years. The government made it a law that no one can build new structures, only renovate the existing ones. We got to see Marco Polo's old house!

After our romantic gondola ride, we had dinner next to The Grand Canal.

What a birthday!


4.26.08

This morning we were supposed to have a general city tour starting at 9:30, meeting point Piazza San Marco. We got there 45 minutes early and waited and waited. Well the tour guide never showed up. I called the company and they apologized up and down promising to give a full refund.

We explored on our own, had some lunch, went back to the hotel for a break, then went back out for the evening. I had read about an older section of Venice and wanted to check it out. We ended up having walking around and having dinner in another super cool outdoor cafe.