Trip 3

We're baaaaack! Hope you didn't miss us too much! Here we are in Prague, but we will get to this another blog...

...For now we will be in beautiful Venice! We were lucky to get an overnight from Prague to Venice on the train, and arrived early morn, only to find out we needed to hop on the train to take us to Venice Santa Lucia, another station...so we rode the train on water about 10 minutes and went to wait in line to buy our next tickets before we explored Venice.

This is a pretty picture to sum it up. We like Venice because when we were walking through all the tiny street when you looked up you could see people poking their head out their window just watching people go by.

Here we are in Venice's Piazza San Marco. We sat here for a while, and on the other side rows of chairs were set up for a concert that evening. We got a little concert of our own as a small orchestra was playing at the restaurant we were chilling by!

Oh Venice and the Gondolas. It was fun to LOOK and not touch as a ride that we asked for cost about 80 euros...we didn't ask anyone else. But, there are lots of different ones some cooler than others and they sure do make Venice feel like Venice!

Here is a pretty view, and on the right is the hotel we decided to stay at (red building with yellow hotel sign). This was the first one we went to, but I said we should check out others, not really smart because this one was perfect and then finding our way back through the streets and bridges was easier said then done, but we managed and had a great stay here. We set out after dropping our stuff off and began to explore, and found a little bakery that had HUGE slices of pizza for cheap, this was our breakfast and probably the best slice we've ever had!

Our hotel recommended a restaurant to us for dinner, and said, "But remember, dinner doesn't start until 7pm." It was 5:30pm, and we didn't remember, because we didn't know! So we went to find the place to check it out for after 7 of course, and found Alaska's Gelato or Gelateria and had a little pre dinner dessert. The place had all these ratings and reviews outside so we guessed it was pretty well known, and after eating decided deservingly so! Next we went to the little grocery store that was just a building or two from our hotel. We picked out some Sicilian wine and the lady recommended us some Sardinian cheese, and a baguette too. It was such a great appetizer, and the woman in the store was so nice! Finally we made it to dinner and Barry had Spaghetti Bolognese and I had a Margherita pizza, we split and shared, yum o!

Oh ya, this is a picture I made Barry take that morning so we remembered what street our hotel was on!!! It truly is easy to get lost in Venice, I think we were most the time!

Here I am walking along, thrilled to have Barry calling my name to turn around for another photo op. We thought it turned out confusingly cool though hehe.

Bye bye Venice, hello Florence!

But, Florence wasn't the plan at all...remember how we went to wait in line for our train tickets at Venice's train station. Well, we were trying to go overnight to Nice, France...we had heard it was beautiful and were quite excited. The train was "cancelled"...we teasingly blamed Brad Pitt...and when we got home to Prague eventually we heard the news about the twins, one named after my fam, and decided maybe he really did cause our change in plans!?!? Anyways we got to Florence and here we are at the bridge over the Arno River. It was gorgeous, you see the buildings and cities along the river, and then off to the distance on each side you see the rolling hills.

We looked for a long time in Florence for a hotel, and decided to splurge on a really nice one! We went there first actually just to get a rate for one night, and walked out a bit overwhelmed, but not ruling it out. When we returned we decided to pull the "we're on our honeymoon" line since we hadn't yet! So we went up to the desk and Barry said, "Well, it is way over our budget, but it is our honeymoon..." The lady proceeded to talk in French to the other lady, and we ended up getting a really cool room in the tower you see below on the left, it was very castle-like and we were so excited! That night when we returned to our room there was a card with Mr. and Mrs. Barry Lacina on it and a chilled bottle of champagne waiting for us! It was definitely worth it.

Here is our castley hotel room there on the top floor.

In this picture you can see the view sine we aren't it it!

Here is David, but not the David. We did see the David, he was the only thing we have had to wait in line for and he was totally worth it. Michelangelo really out did himself. We both think this was our favorite piece of art we have seen.

Ok, we have seen a lot of Duomos it seems, but Florence wins by miles. It was so incredible and to us most impressive.

This is a graphic picture of David destroying Goliath on the golden door across from the Duomo.

This is me, posted by Barry, saying bye for now!!! Hope you enjoyed Venice and Florence, they treated us well and we wouldn't mind returning one bit! Miss you all!

Na Videnou