We got home about 4:30pm today, Tuesday, June 13th. Kevin had to remind me I would just be getting home from W_ _ K at this time. That has not been in my vocabulary for 2 weeks and I still can't say it. Anway, the shuttle dropped off Billy & Kathy at their home first and then us.. yeah.... we made it and we had the time of our lives, and got to experience so many things. Billy and Kathy and us were a team that could handle just about anything, and we have some stories to tell.
We woke up this morning at 3:45 from our St. Marcos Hotel in Venice to catch a water taxi at 4:20 to take us to the Venice Airport to catch our 7:20am flight. (this is Italy time). Now mind you we in the US are 9 hours behind; so as I'm typing this from home, it is now 7:00pm, California time and we are still up. So it would be 4:00am in Italy right now, which means we have been up for over 24 hours. Yikes!
It was still dark when we checked out this morning from Venice and as the 4 of us walked through St. Marcos Square (you know the famous square where people feed the pigeons) there was not another soul in sight, not even a pigeon. This square has been so busy while we have been in Venice. We've seen 3 to 4 cruise ships come into port to drop of the daily tourist, so you can imagine our smiles being the only 4 living souls standing in the square this morning. No pictures, cameras were packed away. We weren't sure where the water taxi would be, and finally spotted him in the dark at one of the docks.
Yesterday our hotel arranged for a free boat ride to Murano Glass factory on Murano Island which was really cool to watch one of the masters at work. He has several apprentices that help him. We walked through the gallery of beautiful, unique glass pieces that are also for sell. Billy & Kathy purchased a dolphin and it will be shipped to their home. It is really cool!
To top of our last evening and meal in Italy, Kevin and I, on our own decided to go to........ McDonalds in Venice. Yes we were craving a burger and fries and it was GREAT! You cannot get a burger anywhere that we had been and we were finally getting tired of Italian food. Got home tonight and we went to Jalepenos for mexican food! Now were home..... in the land that you can buy any type of food you want, speak the language, read the signs and drive in traffic that is sane by our standards now that we've driven in Italy! It's really insane there and we made it 7 days with a rental car with not a scratch to the car. How lucky are we. We've driven going the wrong way, down narrow streets that we had to pull the side mirrors in, back up going up and down a hill on a single lane. We missed our window to return the car in downtown Genoa and found out they were closed for the day. This was our most challenging day of the whole trip. Kevin made the desicion to drop the car off at the Genoa Airport at the Hertz desk. I was with him navigating through the streets of Genoa, while Kathy and Billy were waiting for us with all our luggage at the Genoa train station; waiting for our train departure to Venice. We had no way to communicate with them. We were able to drop the car at the airport, hale a taxi and make it back to the train station with 20 minutes to spare. Phewww... we learned that lesson. Read your travel vouchers the night before, don't thinkk you know it by heart.
We really did have a great time, I just have to let you know about the hard times too!
Love you all for sharing this blog with us! Pictures coming sometime soon 
Colleen
Were home in lovely USA remains copyright of the author ctillis, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.
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