Greetings from Venice

Well we made it safely to Venice yesterday. The train ride from Germany to Italy was beautiful. I took a TON of pictures on the train, and I will definitely post them (along with the much promised, never delivered, Rothenburg pictures).

After arriving in Venice and quickly finding our hotel we dropped of our bags and hopped on a vaparetto down to St. Mark's square. We arrived late enough that a lot of the crowds had left and we had a wonderful time watching people feed the pigeons, lovers strolling hand in hand, and the gondoliers singing from the canals.

Instead of taking the Vapereto back to our hotel (which is about on the opposite side of the city) we took Rick Steve's advice and "got lost" in the city. Since you are on an island you can't really get too lost, but Venice has no discernable street system, and road (well, more pathways, there are no roads) randomly dead end at various spots. We both agreed that this casual meandering through the city's ally ways and back streets was one of the highlights to our trip so far. We saw laundry hanging from building windows, crossed probobly about a hundred bridges, and after about 45 minutes actually made it back to our hotel.

Today we woke up and immediatly went BACK to St. Mark's Square (walked it instead of Vapereto) but this time we toured St. Mark's Bacillica, the Dodge's Palace and walked across the Bridge of Sighs. We then headed back towards our hotel again on foot, stopping along the way to buy Venician glass, Venician silk and other fun items (by the way, mom and dad, ignore the previous sentance, otherwise you will spoil your christmas gifts). We found a little cafe on the way back where we stopped to eat dinner and then we found this internet place. I have to say, this internet place is pretty skimpy (2 computers and limited internet connection, plus the guy behind me is sniffiling like crazy, pray I don't get sick) so I can't upload any pictures tonight of Venice.

Oh, one other side note, during dinner Maddie made a new friend, Emma, who was born on February 21st (just 5 days before her) in Venice, Italy! We of course took a picture of Maddie and Emma, which I would love to share with you, but you will just have to wait until we can upload pictures. We probobly won't post again until we get to Rome, since our next stop is the Cinque Terra, and they don't even have roads, much less internet connections. So this will be it until we near the end of our trip. Everything is going well and we can't wait until we get back to share our photos.