Today we have an 8 hour bus ride to get to Venice. The day started rainy again but we all hoped that the sun would be shining once we arrived at our destination. We traveled through the mountains of Austria and then the Dolomites once we entered Italy. The countryside was beautiful and we ended up taking a lot of pictures from the bus. There are vineyards everywhere and lots of small towns nestled in valleys surrounded by mountains.
We stopped for lunch in a small Italian village and had two other stops at Auto Grills which are similar to our travel plazas but MUCH better.
Upon our arrival in Venice we had to take a vaporetto, water taxi, to get to our hotel. We checked into the Hotel Al Codega, stored our luggage and met back down in the courtyard for a walking orientation of Venice. We were on our own for dinner then we gathered again near the Grand Canal as Karin, our guide, had arranged for us to go on an evening gondola ride - definite WOW moment!! Our ride included champagne and musicians.
Karin
questioned our group to see which couples had been married the longest. It
turned out that Paul and I and Barbara and Bruce were the lucky winners and we got
to be in the gondola with the musicians. We were poled out into the Grand
Canal where they lined all the gondolas up in a row so that everyone could enjoy
the music and the fantastic view!!
We finished off the evening by wandering back to St. Mark's Square and sampling the local drink, a spritzer. What a wonderful introduction to Italy.
