July 8th. 2018

Venice, Murano nd Burano. This area of Italy sits up near the top of "The Boot" in the Adriatic Sea, so the sight and smells of salt water was really nice. What is really apparent as soon as you get there is, there are no streets, only canals (Duh)! Everything that is brought into the vendors etc. is brought into town early in the morning by small barges, then evrything for the hotels, markets, restraunts, vendors etc. is shuffled by small carts through the city by hand. This make the streets of Venice quite frenetic, thrown in with thousands of tourists. It was really fun to walk through Venice, tons of waterways, gondolas filled with Lovers and tourists, all the small narrow walkways, ecclectic shops, restrurants, and water everywhere. Our hotel room's window faced right into Tres Arches canal, so that was interesting and noisy! There was a big church across the canal, that every morning had to ring their bell about 60 times! While we were in Venice Shirley and I spent two days exploring the offshore islands of Murano and Burano. Murano has been famous for a really long time for their handblown glass creations, which I was able to find two small Pandas for Amy! I learned that Panda's arent very popular , and very hard to find in Europe! Burano is famous for seafood, their leaning church steeple and of course the brightly colored bulidings throughout the whole Island, which were very exciting to photograph. In this part of Italy I felt very comfortable with all the water everywhere! We thourghly enjoyed the third stop on our vacation, next stop will be a week in Paris, stay tuned, and dont forget my motto: "Stay Stoked, and Stay Forever Young." Da Lieb