La città di amore (City of Love)

Venice was our first big venture out, since it is only an hour drive or hour and a half by train. We decided we would do the train, since we were still trying to learn how to drive around here. We boarded an early morning train from Sacile, a little town next to ours (parking was cheaper!) We got an older train so no air conditioning, but it was okay since we were going in the morning before it was HOT!

I was a little overwelmed once we reached Venice and were off the train, it sure did warm up fast and there was wall to wall people occupying the streets of Venice. A little history lesson....Venice has also been known as "Queen of the Adriatic", "City of Water", "City of Masks", "City of Bridges", "The Floating City", "City of Canals"! Although there was romance in the air and you could see the beauty bringing out the love in certain couples, we were not feeling the LOVE! I was very much in "PARENTAL" mode, and was frantically keeping tabs on my kids! There really was so many people there I was just trying not to loose a child!





Venice was created on a series of mud banks in a lagoon, so there are no cars, just canals, boats and of course your feet to get you around! We walked from the train station to the other end of the island to see the Plaza of San Marco. Also where St. Mark's Church stands. What a magnificant, breathtaking building. The line to get into it must have been several hours long, as it wrapped around and up and down the building.





There really is a lot to see in this little city, that we just couldn't do it all in a few short hours. Since it is only a short drive away we will have to visit it again (and in the off season) just so we can see things we missed.





There were only two options for our return train ride home. Either catch the 1:00pm train or wait till 8:00pm. I am sure if you had three kids and one of them was under the age of 4 you would have picked the one we did too! LOL We opted to take a water taxi back to the train station verses walking back. Yeah we should have just walked back. It was wall to wall people and standing room only. Hot, sticky, sweaty, stinky, crabby people not a good choice. Taking a gondola back would have been fun, but we were not going to pay 120.00 Euro for a half hour gondola ride!




The boys ended their visit with a scoop of Gellato for the third time (that day) and Clark and I vowed to return to Venice to do some real shopping and to experiance the City of Love the right way! OOH LA LA!