Day 1 Venice and a drive to the Italian Alps

We landed at 9 am and headed off the plane to start our day (even though it is about 2 am in Texas).  We found our rental car (after a mile walk) stashed our luggage and headed back to the airport for a bus ride to the island of Venice. Jackson was full of energy and excitement but things were not as expected and of course, everything takes a while to figure out.


While Dave bought water bus tickets Jackson started looking at souvenier shops and taking pictures of everything mildly interesting he saw.  We boarded the water bus and Jackson was ready to take pictures of everything.  The grand canal was so busy and beautiful.  I couldn't believe the buildings are built right down into the water.

The beautiful and largest bridge was under construction :( but we enjoyed so many other sights.  Jackson was counting the # of statues he saw as well as fountains and churches.  He didn't realize how many he would see on the trip, so he was even counting small and insignificant ones that I wouldn't give a second glance.  

We got off on at the main square of the basilica and palace.  It was so huge!  We heard a band go marching through with dancers behind them.  Unfortunately, the basilica was closed for church services, so we just got to see the beautiful outside of the building.  

We got our first of many gelatos as we started strolling through the 'streets' and streams of Venice. 



 It really was awesome to just 'get lost' in the city (as so many of the tourist sites told us to do).  We loved the narrow streets, the little plazas with fountains, the canals with so many bridges and gondolas.

We found a place to eat lunch and ate out in the courtyard.  Jackson loved the spaghetti (and I was just glad he was eating!  Taking a kid on a trip who doesn't eat very well is scary!)




 We found our bus back to the airport and all started falling asleep.  I was worried since we had a long drive a head of us, but hoped the cat nap was good for us.

We drove a little Fiat that was a maunal.  We were a bit nervous of driving in Italy because of all the things people told us about driving there, but soon enough it because natural and easy.  Dave is a great driver.  About an hour into the drive we started driving up into the Italian Alps.  There were castles around every corner and a tower in every little town.  I was desperately trying to stay awake, so I kept drinking water and soda and then I couldn't get to a bathroom soon enough!  We made it to Bolzano-Bogen where we staying in a hotel we had points at.  The hotel was so nice (and SO few points!).  We wanted to go to sleep at 5 pm, but we knew we needed to stay up later to get climatized to the time zone, so we headed down the street to the grocery store and went shopping.  All the signs were in Italian and German, which worked out great since Dave speaks German.  He was so surprised to find so much German here ,but it was a taste of 'home' for him.  We ate McDonalds for dinner and fell asleep trying to watch the opening scenes of "Italian Job"  It was so fun to see Venice in the movies after experiencing it.

Jackson slept on the floor and we had a great king bed.  11 hours later we all woke up refreshed and ready to start anew.

      Getting there  Day 1 Venice   Day 2 Italian Alps Day 3 Cinque Terre  Day 4 Florence  Day 5 Rome  Day 6 Vatican