Hotel Terme Orvieto Abano Terme

... The Hotel Bologna is excellent – great location, free WiFi, reasonable rates, with a lovely room (marble everywhere and a huge bathroom). Breakfast is good too.

We stopped at one of Mestre’s many cafes on the Piazza, and started with our usual late afternoon vino bianco/beer and followed up with gelato and/or cocktails. Brilliant.

The local police were having some sort of display while we happily looked on - they ...

... which we bought in a supermarket earlier. Budget, but practical travellers us. We then wandered the avenues to the Rialto bridge, and I lost shell's backup pair on sunnies while whispering sweet things in her ear. They fell off my head and into the Grand canal. I guess the sunglasses couldn't handle it and bailed overboard.

The part of Venice none of us had been to was the island Lido just 30 mins boat ride away from the main square, so ...

... hotel.
Now off to Padova...a bit of hairy driving around the lake..not because of drivers, but narrow winding roads with nowhere to go. It was a relief to hit the Autostrada, even though they are generally boring driving. It was a long drive to Padova and we were excited to finally pull up at Nadia and Claudio's. Nadia is a schoolmate of John's.......just a few years ago. After a late lunch Nadia took us into Padova and showed us ...

... Marco square. It was lovely and cool sitting on the Italian marble steps watching everyone (and the pigeons) walk through the square. Someone in a huge bunch of kids got pooped on by a pigeon and what a to do it was.

After San Marco we walked out to the Vaporetto and took it back to the train station. The guy at the ticket booth was not nice and Jen and I were both a bit grouchy by the time the boat came. I looked at here when I got on the boat and said okay we gotta change ...

... at 7:00 and our laundry would be done. Okay we thought the other guy left I guess it's okay. We had a bit of disagreement with him when we were loading the machines though as he wanted to put our whites, darks and red all together but we manged to get the No point across' loaded the machines and left.

We walked back to the hotel listening to the church bells and saying how we were going to miss them. We only stopped for gelato which Jen promptly got on her bag, her dress, her ...

It turns out going in reverse with a caravan is not easy (unless your day job is truck driving). That is what I realized when I heard the "bum" while driving backward in a narrow lane of an Italian highway toll point. I hope that the repair of one tail light will not make this trip much more expensive. But we really had a beautiful day. We drove through the Alps passing a long set of long tunnels and bridges and then all the way to Venice. We are sleeping in a ...

... ticket is also valid to get you to Murano under your own steam - it's a nice play for a little quiet time away from the hussle of St Marks - Leave plenty of time to get back to the airport - the rush hour is awful - A lot of the big sights will not let you take bags into them but will provide free safe bag storage. Either pack in your pockets or resign yourself to dumping bags. - There are supermarkets around - just not near St Marks. Near St ...

... I decided to walk around the city a bit and grab some gelato (which is amazing, by the way!). My travel companions Brian, Anthony, Matt, and Britt arrived to open the door and show me to our room. We then ate an amazing dinner of seafood pasta! After dinner, we walked around the winding streets in the rain then went to bed.
Brian and I awoke early the next ...

... mosaics. From the top we saw a blue clock and later found out that the artist that created it had his eyes poked out so he would be unable to replicate it anywhere else, a trend that I hear is quite common for European artists a few centuries ago. Settling down for espresso and water in the Piazza we listened to a live, enthusiastic band fool around with each other and get everyone involved. So honestly, how much is a gondola ride in Venice? Guesses? Well the price is ...

... the canals were amazing to me, the way the city is built pretty much in the water is pretty darn impressive!!! Beth and I really liked all of the outdoor markets and cute little shops!!! Masquerade Parades arw a big thing there so we bought these really cool masks to remeber how much we loved it there!!! The hostel we stayed in was really nice and very clean so that added to us having a great time there...except the first day we checked in to the hostel Beth ...