Venice

What a beautiful city! Quite breath taking.
But in order to get to Venice we had to drive there from Garmisch. No mean feat!!!!

We left Garmisch and within an hour or so had arrived at Innsbruck, where we had to stop and pay a motorway toll. Christopher (our trustworthy, yet speedy driver) pressed the electric button to wind down his window and we heard a little 'clunk' sound. Yep the window fell down inside the door of the car!!!
After an hour of trying to find a garage we decided to put on all the overcoats, beanies, gloves and scarves and just carry on driving to Venice sans window.

Well the speedometer seemed to hover on 100 miles an hour and the temperature gauge swung between -6 and -11. Of course who knows what the wind chill factor was?????? So the trip through the Italian Alps will always include a memory of, not only the absolute beauty of the snow draped mountains, but also a freezing cold, chillblain induced drive.

We finally arrived (7 hours later) in Venice. It was late, we were all tired (and yes cold) and it was pitch dark. How we found our hotel I'll never know. But we did and we still managed to head off and find a gorgeous restaurant (thanks to Chris) where we devoured some very good Italian food and wine.

The next morning we all split up and went on our merry way to discover this beautiful city. Wow! One of the photo's I've attached was taken from our bedroom window - such a fabulous view. Once again Celia pulled some strings and the sun shone so brightly. We loved it, we took a small map with us and the 4 of us wandered around all day. We managed to see so much and loved it all. As we strolled through the Basilica we came across a small side chapel where we lit some candles for Mum, Dad and Richie. It was a special moment as just then a very elderley priest came out and said Mass. It was a wonderful half hour for me.

We thought the city was amazing, very fascinating & not at all smelly (as we had been led to believe). It was so unusual to see everyone going to work on a boat rather than a car, I had to chuckle as I thought it was quite strange to see the builders head off with the cement mixer on the back of the boat rather than that on the back of their ute!!!

It was the one place the girls and I spent way too much money on trinkets! I think being the end of the trip we felt a need to spend the balance of the available funds on glass and masks! We had heaps of fun doing just that.

We will, without a doubt, return to Italy and would love to devote a few weeks to that fabulous country. Besides the beauty of it all, we just love pasta!