Life Is All About Adventure: Venice, Italy June 15th and 16th

The day arrived that we finally made it to our last port. Were we saddened by this? Yeah just a bit but we were ready. It had started to get hard with LL in such a small space. She loved playing on deck but not having her toys and especially her bed had started to take a toll on all of us and now that we were coming to the end we knew we were a mere days away from being back to it all. Now on to Venice. The boat arrived in Venice in the afternoon of what felt like the hottest day of the trip. Uuuggghhh. When we finally arrived and were cleared to go ashore we packed up the stroller and were off. The line to get the bus was 30 minutes long and the lady said the walk was maybe 20 so we decided to walk. We then made it to the people mover and discovered that the busses were dumping everyone there and the line for that was hours long so we just walked into the city. It was hot. We had not even made it to the city and we were done. Then when we did make it and it took us over an hour to go maybe one block we decided to turn around and go back to the boat. We should have done our homework. We knew Venice was full of bridges but we had no idea they were all stairs. Taking a stroller was not fun at all and we just could not handle it. Instead we spent our first afternoon in Venice on the ship at the pool and just lounging around.

Sailing into Venice- We were the 6th cruise ship in port!

Evangeline was one of LL's favorite crew members on board.

Looking out over Venice

Making waves

She thought it was hilarious to Belly flop into the water

LL loved the kiddie pool

We had a snack and a nap, then after it had cooled a bit we went back into the city with LL in the baby carrier. That was not much more enjoyable but much more manageable especially as it cooled down. We quickly discovered we went the wrong way into the city the first time and it would not have been so bad with the stroller if we had not gone in the direction that we did. We ate dinner at a lovely restaurant. LL chased pigeons around a square while S checked for our hotel information using their WIFI. The boat was overnighting in Venice but we had to disembark the next day and needed to figure out where we were going and how to get there. We found an address and a map. We then wandered for a bit looking in the different shops and were intrigued by all these groups of young men and women dressed in weird outfits. Apparently they were bridal parties and for the bachelor and bachelorette parties they go all out. We saw one group dressed up as Native Americans, complete with the bride wearing a canoe. They did war cries and danced and of course drank. We saw another group dressed up as ballerinas. All heavily drunk and if you paid the bride she would dance. It was kinda crazy but they looked to be having tons of fun. We eventually found our hotel and headed back to the ship by 9 o’clock. We finished packing and went to bed.

Climbing stairs and chasing pigeons hat more could a girl need

In the morning it was a lazy thing. We had breakfast and waited for our time to leave. We took the latest time figuring we had no rush to leave. There was some delay in leaving though and where we were supposed to be off around 9:45 we didn’t leave the ship until closer to 11 or so. We then tried to get a taxi and were ignored and turned down because we were only going into town and the drivers wanted the larger fair of going to the airport. We walked again. This time just to the people mover but it was rough hauling the stroller, toddler, 3 larger suitcases, 2 backpacks, LL backpack, and a camera bag. We eventually got on the people mover and headed to town. S and I walked to the bridge closest to our hotel and I waited on one side with the stroller and one suitcase while he crossed over and checked into the hotel with the rest of the stuff. Then he came back and we took the rest of it over. We were pleasantly surprised by the hotel. The room was huge! It had a ginormas bathroom and air conditioning! They provided us with an awesome travel cot for LL and it was perfect. After we settled in we asked the concierge what we should do with one day in the city. He gave us a map and outlined the path to follow. We saw the Rialto Bridge, Saint Marks Square, took a Water Taxi, sat on some world heritage (where we were told “ do not sit on the world heritage” lol) and finished up with a lovely dinner. After dinner we went for a gondola ride at sunset then returned to our hotel for a nice quiet evening. In the morning we would be off to ride the train out to Bellagio for the final part of our vacation.