Italy

      Okay, this is Tammy again. The night before we left Switzerland, we had this picture taken with Jubi and his mom.

     Colby was right, the Bernina Express took us through some beautiful country, but it was a little long. This was my favorite picture from the entire ride:

     We finally made it to Italy! This video is at the train station on the Switzerland/Italian border.

     We traveled from the border to Milan to Cinque Terre. It was a very long day of train rides, but we made it! As you can tell from the handy map, Cinque Terre means "Five Villages." They are all connected by a path that is around 11 km long and takes around 5 hours to hike.

     It was sunset when we arrived and such a beautiful place! The ocean (Gulf of Genoa) was beautiful!   

     We ate seafood that night for dinner at an outdoor restaurant close to the shore. The next morning it was blazing hot, so rather than hiking to the next city we decided to take the boat.

     This was our favorite gelato place all because of the guy selling it!! He was so cool and nice we had to get him on video. He was a good sport about it.

     We went to three of the five cities. At the last city we went to we found this awesome free toilet (most bathrooms we saw in Europe cost a little bit of money to use):

(No, we did not use the bathroom here. We decided we could wait.)

     It was so blazing hot in Cinque Terre and we hadn't packed swimming stuff, so we headed for the train station early in the afternoon to make our way to Venice. On our train ride there, we drove past this city:

This picture was taken for Grandma Pendleton

     We arrived in the romantic city of Venice that evening! I couldn't believe we were there! It was so cool!!!!

We look tired, but we really were thrilled to be there!

     We ate dinner outside that night at a nice little restaurant. After living on bread and cheese for a while, it was so nice to have some fresh fruits and vegetables. It was all sooo good! Eating delicious food on a warm evening in Venice under the moonlight- yeah, we felt like we were in heaven.

     We walked around that evening and ate dinner outside. It was so fun walking over the little bridges over the canals and checking out these old buildings.

     Colby had reserved a quaint bed and breakfast for us and he did such a good job! The owner was the sweetest lady and she took good care of us. I wish we would've gotten more pictures of where we stayed.      The next morning we walked around Venice and enjoyed taking some pictures.

                           

Colby and the Grand Canal

     We walked to St. Mark's Square and found a billion fat pigeons who really love humans! 

Colby and his pigeon friend

I love looking at the background of this picture! It was such a fun and cool moment!!

     We went on a tour of the Basilica and it was neat. Colby paid 2 Euros to go inside the treasury....

A real skull

A real hand

     I'm kind of glad I didn't pay 2 Euros to go in there.... But I think Colby thought it was cool.

     We checked out a few more things and then stopped for some real Italian food. There were lots of items on the menu that included pasta and seafood, but we both opted for just pasta. It was pretty good.

A beautiful evening in St. Mark's Square

     Our goal for today was to go on a gondola ride. It was an expensive 45 minutes, but we had to do it. We went on an evening ride and it was perfect.

Our humorous and friendly gondolier!

This is where we stayed while we were in Venice. 

     We got up earlier on Friday August 3rd to catch our flight to Ireland. We flew from Venice to London, where we had a layover. While in London, we caught a quick train ride to Bishops Stortford. We just walked until we found a grocery store, then we bought some food and headed back to the airport.

Notice the street name.... He's wondering about platform nine and three quarters...

This was taken at the London airport.