a day in venice!!!

Yesterday, we made it to Venice....it is indescribably gorgeous....how I wish that I could show you all 400 pictures that I took....it was so hard to choose just a few....we walked throughout the city, took a leisurely lunch and went on a Gondola ride where we got a lot of information from the gondaleer....for instance, 65,000 people live on the tiny island of Venice and the cost to live there is approximately $35,000 per square meter, so it is very expensive to live there....it is very old, and you can see in a couple of the pictures that I uploaded that they have had to reinforce some of the walls from tumbling down....the water rises during high tide and it looks as though some get water in their homes from the stains on the walls....the side streets are very tiny and some of them barely allow two people to go down it at once....I wish that you all could have been with us....I hope you enjoy just the very few pictures that I put up....we slept in all day today, Chris and I both have colds, probably from being in the wind and rain during his race.....it is now almost 8pm and we are getting ready to go eat dinner, and then we will go to Florence tomorrow....I will post the pictures of Florence when we get back....Love you all.

I thought that I would start with a picture that has all the colors of Fall

Pea, I know what you can do with all of your cats, send them to Venice.
Our little guy that took us on our Gondola ride...he said that he had been doing this his whole life....and he doesn't live on the island.
You can see that the water rises above the stairs.


Everywhere you looked, people had their laundry hanging out...this was probably one of my favorite things about Venice....life seems simple.