Venice & Florence

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We got an earlier start today not so far to drive, we started by going to Venice, parked the car over on the island arrived midday thought we would stay for couple of hours, they don't have hourly rates for the parking only a flat rate of 26 EUR wow that's expensive but of course there is nowhere else to park unless you want to go to the mainland and get the bus or train over. We took the water taxi to have look around the outside of the city, again it is so much bigger than I imagined. There was a huge thunderstorm right above us but it only lasted about 30mins of course I didn't bring either of the two umbrellas we have so we had to buy another one ( at least we used this one) we got off the taxi to go and have a look around the middle of Venice to find the gondolas, when we did it was 80 EUR for 1/2 hr so we decided that we would look at the shops instead...ohh some bargains to be found there were...much to Mal's annoyance today, how are they going to fit all that in the car? How many bags did you buy? That's not three that's four.... Oh no that one is Lexie's not mine, she got that with her own money. We walked for hours trying to get back to the car, I kept getting distracted by the shops. We left Venice at 4pm and headed to Florence which is still nearly 3hrs away. Arrived at Westin Excelsior what a beautiful hotel with a huge room and the most comfortable bed. We decided to have a look around the city as it was only a 10min walk, jumped in the elevator with an American fireman (Gabriel) and his wife (Tina) so, how do we know there names I hear you ask....well all of a sudden the lift got stuck and we were trapped, it was very freaky and Lexie was quite scared. Gabe took control and pushed the alarm, that called the maintenance company, he tried prying the doors open and we could just hear the staff saying they going to reset the elevator, so the lights went out, it was now getting very hot with 5 people, the lift moved down a bit... that gave us all a fright, then they reset it a couple more times and on the third time it went back to the second floor, we couldn't get out of there quick enough and didn't use the lift again. Regrouped in our room and then went into the city, it is another beautiful place, we all rode the carousel. Back to our room by 11pm and crashed on the most comfortable bed EVER!! slept like a baby

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