Our Time in India: Venice, Italy

Instead of flying straight back we took a slight detour to see a bit more of the world and break up the trip a bit. We flew from Chicago to London then to Venice, Italy. On route we weren't that excited about going and wondered why we chose Venice. It basically came down to the long list of European cities easily within reach on London and the flight coast. And the fact that Ted said this was it if I ever wanted to see Venice so there we were! The flight from Chicago to London was a decent flight, we left Chicago around 10 pm so we were ready to sleep once on board. Then in London we had checked some bags into storage and headed to London's Gatwick airport to board the flight to Venice. Once in Venice we boarded a water taxi and went to our destination. The directions were kind of vague, such things as walk for about 10 minutes to taxi stand, ride boat for about 30 minutes, walk about 7 minutes, etc. Ted masterfully found the way to our hotel even though it was dark! The kids were great with helping with the luggage. We were glad that we had left most of our luggage behind in London as there are lots of bridges in Venice. The hotel was a nice hotel that was built in the 1500's. We didn't head to Venice with any sort of agenda or schedule, we just wandered the city and toured a few sights. The history behind this city is just incredible and we didn't even begin to see a fraction of it! I loved the cobblestone streets, the beautiful bridges, the flower boxes hanging from windows, the dogs dressed in their coats, the ladies in their fur coats and hats, the lack of noise from cars and horns, the gondola ride, the people that just sang as they walked down the street, etc! The one thing that I did miss was grass....there isn't any grass anywhere. Well, except for the dog park that we passed but it smelled so strongly of urine that is wouldn't be enjoyable for anyone but a dog. We went to St. Mark's square which is famous for all the pigeons. We took some crackers to attrack them and eventually had pigeons all over us. Fortunatuly none of us got pooped on! From St. Mark's Square we toured the Saint Mark's Basilica which was incredible, it had beautiful pictures made out of mosaic tiles which each tile was no bigger than 1/4" . This Basilica was at once time the personal chapel for the ruler who lived in the Doge's Palace (Palazzo Ducale di Venezia) which we also toured. The Palace stretched on forever and the kids really enjoyed seeing the prison. We decided that prisoners wouldn't have lasted the winters as we were very cold with our winter coats on! Probably the highlight for me was riding in the gondola and having the boatman sing to us in Italian. The views from the water were spectacular. One of the funniest moments we had was when we learned that cuddlefish was really a fish like we were thinking of. Ted and the boys decided to order a 2 course meal. The first course was seafood pasta. They thought this would be pretty safe, if there were creatures they didn't want to eat they could just pick them out. However it appeared the pasta only was served with clams in the shell. Ted and Logan ate most of theirs. Mason remembered learning about the anatomy of clams in biology class and decided that he really didn't want to eat them. Emily did take a bite just to say to tried clams! Then the second course came, Grilled Cuddlefish with fresh vegetables, we all assumed that the Cuddlefish was a type of fish but soon we learned that cuddlefish is a type of squid and had all the little tentacles and everything. I was glad I ordered plain pasta that night!