After spending a few days in the hospital with Colitis, the doctor released Valerie to travel and off to Italy we went. We left on Tuesday, June 10th on separate flights but both arrived safely in Venice on the afternoon of June 11th.
Upon arriving at the Marco Polo airport, we caught a cab to the same hotel the kids from Glenbard East were staying and then another cab to church where the kids were performing. There was some mix up with the hotels but we finally caught up with everyone just as they started their opening song. We really wanted to surprise everyone since the last word the kids and chaperones had received was that Valerie was still in the hospital. The concert was just fantastic and Valerie received more hugs than we could count. After having dinner with kids, we retired for the night after an extremely long day of travel.
We started the morning early on Thursday, June 12
th and caught a train to the island of
Venice. Venice was just as you could imagine, little
canals forming alleys between many of the buildings, small bridges creating spectacular views, and the grand
canal that equates to a waterway
thoroughfare for the city. All goods and services must arrive on the island by boat so a
continuous stream of shuttle boats can be seen along with smaller boats delivering goods to the stores and
restaurants. I never thought I would seen
DHL packages being delivered by Boat!!
Most of our day was meandering through the romantic cobble stone streets to capture a view of the Rialto Bridge, St. Mark's Basilica, Piazza San Marco, and taking a very relaxing Gondola ride. St. Mark's Basilica was truly breathtaking with gold colored mosaics covering the entire ceiling. It reminded us of the St. Louis Basilica. Unfortunately, they did not allow photography in the building, so you'll have to take our word for it. Also, due to the continually settling ground, the entire floor of the Basilica undulated like waves on the sea. some as much as a foot or more. We began to wonder how the building continued to stand at all.
We truly enjoyed our short stay in Venice and had to jump on a train to Florence in the afternoon. The train was very relaxing after a long day of walking of walking the Venice streets and allowed us to catch a little nap.
We arrived in Florence in the early evening on Wednesday, headed off to dinner, and off to bed.
There are a couple of pictures from Venice included here. To see the rest, use this link:
This was one of the most spectacular views in all of Italy. It is the small town of Monterosso, which is one of the towns that make up the Cinque Terra. The Cinque Terra are five towns along the Mediterranean cost of Northern Italy, just north of Viarregio. Typically, one would visit the five towns by either taking a boat, hiking the trail that connects the five towns, or taking the train that runs underneath the mountain range. We took a very long, narrow, and treacherous road way that runs alone the rim of the mountain that overlooks the five towns. Unfortunately, this left us no time to visit the other four towns. When we make it back to Italy, it will be a priority to visit this area again.
