Moments to Remember: Not Everyday

At the beginning of the year, Nathan and I decided, "WE ARE GOING ON A TRIP TOGETHER THIS YEAR - SANS KIDS." It was just about that time I got a text from Jake saying he'd found amazingly cheap airline tickets to Europe. Nathan has always dreamed of traveling to Italy, and Marci had been talking about a trip to Italy for a couple years so we booked our tickets that very night as to not miss this opportunity. Nathan had acquired a $600 airline voucher on a previous business trip so I think we paid around $400 total for our two tickets. Woo! After a fair amount of reading, planning, and a hefty tax season, we were quite ready for this trip to come to fruition. Thankfully, Nathan's mom was very kind and gracious to come wrangle the children from the Friday-Saturday while we were gone. It was a very busy week with sports and school stuff, and just the craziness of 6 children in one household so I'm sure we may have nearly keeled her off. She's always upbeat and makes it seem like "no biggie". Very grateful she was willing to allow us this adventure.

The long flights are not my favorite, but our flights there went off without a hitch. Whew!

At the France airport we saw this fun restaurant in the background. There was food circulating around on this conveyor belt. See something passing by that looks good? Grab and scarf.

We made it to Venice! We spent Saturday afternoon and Sunday here before meeting up with Caleb and Marci who arrived a few days earlier and moved on from Venice to spend time with Marci's aunt who lives in Italy. After a bus ride to the vaporetto (public transit by boat), we hopped aboard what we thought was a little boat. Ha! Nope it was just a floating boat stop. The actual boat arrived shortly, and we were on our way down the canal to our AirBNB in the Dorsoduro area.

Such a sight to behold.

Rialto Bridge completed in 1591.

After a quick shower, we were ready to "get lost" in the streets of Venice. We definitely did get lost. We also got soaking wet in the heavy rain that fell and fell. There were men pedaling umbrellas all over the place, but we kept turning them down thinking our waterproof jackets would suffice. About the time our shoes, pants, and coats were soaked through we finally broke down and bought a stinkin' umbrella.

Despite the wet and cold, we hit up a traditional gelato shop "Grom" and then followed that with a gelato pop. Then we raced back to our flat to dry off and clean up for dinner.

After much searching we decided to try a little pizza joint that had good ratings. So we put on dry shoes and jackets, grabbed our umbrella and headed back to the vaparetto. After some confusion with our order (language barrier), we raced through the rain back to the boat with our goods since there was no seating at the pizzeria. We waited, and waited, and waited for the boat with no sign of it. We felt it necessary to bust into the pizza right then and there. We "needed" to try it warm of course.

In our hustle it appears that the cheese and olive migrated.

We started day two in Venice at Accademia Museum since they offer free entrance on the first Sunday of each month. On our way there, we saw this fun store window display of someone's amazing wood creations. WOW!

The view over Accademia Bridge.

First breakfast. Pastry, "toast" rolls, cookies, and a very mediocre cheese omelet.

And let's not forget this "hot chocolate". Ha ha.

Then we made our way down the canal to St. Mark's Square. That's St. Mark's Basilica in the background.

We booked a tour of Doge's Palace. It was very interesting despite the fact that our "English-speaking guide" had a very thick accent which made it hard to understand much of what she said.