Venice...

This my friends is St. Marks Chapel. The gold mosaics are indescribable. Every night here in St. Marks square there are 4 orchestras that all play amazing music. On our last night in Venice we stood in this square taking in one last moment of this trip. As we continued to eat our gelato one of the most beautiful songs ever written started to play by one of the orchestras. It is this song that is now playing on my blog that we heard. As the music started, I reflected on our whole experience in Venice.

I wanted to stay a little longer-

just to experience it all one more time...

... I wanted to walk through this arch way one more time to get to our hotel that was orange with green shutters. I wanted to see just how many shirts could hang dry in one day...

...I wanted to to go back to Murano Island to play for an afternoon. How fun to see blown glass, and window shop for things we couldnt afford...

...I wanted to see the reflections one more time...


...I wanted to wear make up in Venice for goodness sake...



...I wanted the chance to see more bright buildings on the water...



...I wanted to see my honey stand by this canal one more time showing off his new jeans...

...I wanted to see one more gondola parked bobbing in the water...

I needed one more sunset in VENICE!

As the song ended so did my wondering mind. I just wanted one more day. One more day of this amazing place. The novelty of Venice didnt disappoint. We loved our stay here. So many great things to see. Hand in hand we left St. Marks square a little sad that the trip was coming to an end but so happy for the opportunity we had to do it.
So we kissed and thanked each other for such a fun adventure...
and promised for more world travels...
lets just hope it isnt for heart mending...




You know your fairytale vacation has come to an end...
when THIS is your luggage:
One bag of clothes and one bag of Souvenirs.
This is our slap of reality...
welcome home!

Florence....

We should have known better when we saw the bike racks in Florence. I mean every where else had matching bikes in an orderly fashion, but here... not so much!! Every person we talked to RAVED about Florence and to that we say.....blah. blah. blah! Sure it was beautiful and we were in Italy but we didn't love this place. The day started out with some smiles. But behind this smile was an uncomfortable feeling. Paranoid about our luggage that we just left behind for the hotel to babysit while we went site seeing for the day.

We walked down the Renaissance streets of Florence really not into it. We wondered if we made the right choice to visit this place. Yes there is history here and things to see but we weren't diggin it. We did see DAVID (well the fake one) But, this is where he originally stood.

It was about this point of the morning I said to Romney

"can we please go back and get our stuff?"

and my sweet so endearing husband said

"babe it'll be fine"

A few feet further from David was the famous Dumo. Yes it's a lot of green goin on. We stood there took a quick snap shot and moved on. Still not lovin Florence.

I asked again
" can we please go back and get our stuff?"

and my sweet, kind, loving, husband says

"we said a prayer this morning it's going to be fine"

At this point I'm annoyed and nagging "can we please go back and get our stuff"

and my charming sweet heart says

"lets climb the Dumo before the sun goes down and we'll go get our stuff"

I couldn't even enjoy the bridges that Florence has to offer.

Soooo, we climbed the 400 something stairs to the top...

...For the best seats in the house...

This was by far the BEST thing we did that day! It was a hard climb but worth the view.

We loved the view and heard all the different bells ringing from the top of Florence.

very cool.

Once we got to the bottom I said "can we please go back and get our stuff?"

and my sweet husband finally said "YES!!!"

he's a stubborn one that romney.

We walk in the hotel to get our belongings. Right when we walked in my heart fell and there was a pit in my stomach... all we saw was our neck pillow, the big brown tube that held our paintings, and a plastic bag of souvenirs sitting on the couch. Everything else was gone!!! Romney ran out the door to the train station and started searching trash cans for anything that was ours. I sat in the hotel lobby starring at the wall while one little tear fell down my cheek. All of our stuff had been stolen. I felt sick about it! Everything was gone!! ALL NEW Clothes, underwear, socks, makeup, medication, my hair CHI, etc... When Romney returned we tried to work anything out with the hotel people and they were useless. We went to the store that night to buy some toiletries. And for heaven sakes we were in Italy...fashion capitol. Where on earth were we going to get new clothes that we could afford???

H&M was the answer the following morning.

We caught the fastest train out of there.

We left our sadness in Florence telling ourselves "its just stuff"
"all replaceable stuff"

and headed to Venice, excited!

Romney appolgized all night and promised me that I could buy whatever I wanted when we got home....

and I did.

Yes, we had all money, credit cards, passports and camera goods on us.