A few days ago . . .

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So we made it to Greece, how exciting! The boat, pretty much a low end cruise ship, was amazing! It felt so good to just relax and enjoy the sun . . . the only dissappointment? Greeks do not know how to make coffee the way the Italians do! They just don't appreciate the last of good coffee like the Italians . . . I know that's the first thing I'll get when we get back to Italy! (by the way, this is Laura writing).

Well let's go back a few days and talk about Venice . . . a very pituresque, charming town . . . as long as it doesn't rain. We made it to about 3pm in the afternoon seeing all the sights, St. Marks square, the Basilica, The Doge Palace (sp?), the grand canal (obviously!), and the fish/fruit market. We saw a lot of other stuff while we were walking around, but we didn't know exactly what we were seeing because it's hard to walk around with a map let alone a guidebook! That was actually something really cool about Venice; we didn't need a map hardly at all! You get to your starting point and then you have to just follow the signs, because if you try and use a map you'll lose your way and get all mixed up because only some streets connect on both sides of the small little canals. It was so great to just walk and turn where it said to turn, rather than figuring out where we had to turn and where to go next.

After trapsing all over town we sat down for a while and had some of the best pizza we've had in Italy, then headed over to the Peggy Guggenhuim Museum, it's modern art museum and almost all of it was from her private collection! That was when it started raining . . . it didn't let up much, and then when we finished and we got on a vaporetto (water bus) headed to Lido (we wanted to see the city from the water) it started to pour . . . I mean terrential downpour!! It was crazy you couldn't even see the city because it was raining so hard! We weren't quite sure what to do, we were both exhausted but it was our only day in Venice so we just sort of tried to wait it out, which worked a little but then after I paid 4 euros for the smallest beer on the planet we decided to go back to the campsite. Seriously my beer couldn't have been more than 10 oz. and we were just stopping there to kill time . . . I was not a happy tourist! haha

After we decided to go back, we got to the bus station and had to wait for our shuttle back to the campground. Jen was hungry but she didn't know for what so we walked through practically every snack bar and trattoria looking for something/anything that would tempt her taste buds . . . we ended up waiting and getting spaghetti at the restaurant at our campground. It was funny! At the end of the day we were both in pretty good spirits and recognized that while we were both in bad moods about 2 hours earlier neither one of us was mad with the other, it was just bad weather, cold, and no fun to be out sightseeing. It makes sense that that kind of stuff would put anyone in a bad mood, right!? A good friendship building convo . . . good for us!

Well I'm about to sign off here, but a few comments on all your comments . . .

1. Gregg you are right I saw the Pantheon in Rome not the Parthenon (I momentarily forgot that there were two different monuments, haha) 😊

2. Spelling errors are to be expected on a blog . . . I mean come on!! We are so excited about all that we're doing we are trying to type as fast as we can so you all can hear about it too!! . . . Well that and we have to pay for internet and we were raised Dutch so we have to be most efficient with our time and money! 😊

3. Craig and Krista you were right the Cinque Terre was beautiful, unfortunately Craig we didn't get your advice til after we left, and Krista I think Venice was maybe 5 degrees warmer while we were there than when you were 😊!

4. Keep the comments coming, we love hearing from you all!!

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Photos

Pizza . . . yum!
Here is the great pizza we had in Venice, yummy!

St. Marks Basilica
Not much to say . . . this is San Marco square and Basilica.

Rain, rain, go away . . .
This is me in the torrential downpour we experienced aboard a boat in Venice!