The Queen of the Adriatic

Zac and I boarded a train early the next morning.  Jared was still sound asleep.  We were the only people on the tram uphill.  I can't remember how long we were on the train, but I wanna say 5 hours.  The views were again, beautiful.  But how can anyone picture the Italian countryside as ugly.

Pretty

This is how Zac looked...bored

The most bizarre part of this trip was that as we got closer and closer to Venice, it got soooo much hotter in train.  By the end, we were sweating.  About 15 minutes from the end of the ride, we snapped this shot of us glistening and happy!

This was why...we could actually see Venice finally

We arrived in venice then had the task of finding our hotel amongst all those crazy narrow streets.  We knew we were staying just off St. Marc's Square, which is incredibly vague as it turns out.  We loaded up with all the other tourists into a water taxi and patient floated along the main canal in Venice.  I wanna say it took us 45 minutes worth of occasional stops to actually stop at the square.  This was one of the first things we saw when we arrived, the Dodge's Palace

We wandered from there, with our crazy hectic looking map of Venice to find the Hotel Antico Panada. We eventually did run into it.  Oddly, there was a McDonalds a few shops down which just proves that McDonalds is everywhere!  

Our hotel was perfect, but a maze.  We checked in and a man showed us to our room. First we went up two floors in an elevator so small that after the bellhop and I got in, Zac had to back in, and we still didn't fit.  The bellhop got out and said that he would meet us there.  After we got off the elevator we walked through a couple hallways, down a half flight of stairs, through a door, up another short set of stairs, through another door and into another elevator, up one more floor to our room.  It was great!  A big bed, elaborate tapestries, a Murano glass chandelier, marble bathroom and a jacuzzi tub.  Loved it!!  We promptly dropped our bags and headed out.  We wandered first, aimlessly.  First things first, ice cream.

And pizza for Zacman

It was exactly what I thought I expected, hard to describe.  

Definately narrow.....and somewhat crowded

One of the things I loved most about Venice was how unexpected things pop up.  Like the face of this man, above a door at the end of a rather typical (for Venice) alley. 

Or this painting

Venice feels ancient.  Everyone knows that its beautiful.  But it's also crumbling...almost gritty.  We found a perfect example

We walked around, wandered in and out of shops and alleys.  Stopped for lots of photo ops, including another of my favorite pictures from our entire honeymoon.   

Of course we couldn't not take pictures of the gondoliers and the amazing gondolas.  They were so elaborate.  We desperatly wanted to ride one, but it cost like $150 for a half hour and we just couldn't afford it. 

And some of the many canals and bridges.

We wandered back to the square and towards our hotel.  We stopped long enough at the square for Zac to take quite the artisitic shot of the clock tower.

We went back to our hotel, with food we picked up at a local butcher shop. Ate and it was ready to try out that tub. I let Zac go first.  After a few minutes he yelled, "oh no, Abbie!"  I was worried, I thought something, somehow, had gone wrong.  I walked in the bathroom to find this

He completely overflowed the tub with bubbles.  When I asked him how much soap he'd put in the tub he answered, "just a little."  Then I saw the evidence and couldn't help but laugh.  As it turns out, when Zac said, "just a little" what he really meant was just a little..more than half the bottle.

I waited my turn, took my long bath, and we ate some dinner, I cleaned up the bubble mess in the bathroom and we passed out.