Venezia

So we discovered a possible reason why our flight from Rome to Venice was so incredibly cheap...being an early morning flight, the local transit wouldn't get us there in time for the flight so we had to fork over the money and pay for a car to the airport. It was still cheaper to fly with extra cost than it was to take the train, and of course it's only a 50 minute flight, so it def added time in Venice for us.
When we arrived in Venice we were able to get right on the taxi which is actually a water boat and landed in at St. Mark's square before 10 in the morning. It did take an hour though to get from the airport to the square.
It is just so cool to land in the airport and take off on a boat. It's hard to comprehend that there are no cars and walking or taking the boat is the navigation choice.
We had heard alot about how Venice stinks, but perhaps because we were there in the winter when it is cooler, we didn't find it smelled at all.
So we're on a roll with Italian hotels...apparently our hotel didn't have hot water, so they moved all the guests to another hotel of similar caliber and it was beautiful!
The only downside was our canal side room was set back in and we couldn't actually see the water...anyway after our usual form of travel rooms, we have no complaints for the huge beautiful spacious hotels! :)
We had the most fantastic time getting lost in Venice, stopping for espressos and taking it all in.

I now understand why all the reviews on Gondola rides are so mixed. We did the Venice thing and went for our "romantic" Gondola ride...it is the one thing that didn't surpass my imaginations...although it was fantastic, I would not consider this to be romantic...first off unless you pay huge amounts of money for a private one, you will be pretty much guaranteed to have others in your boat...which is actually fine when you understand this is not really a romance event. The Gondoliers are all talking shouting to one another through the canals, checking their email etc...so it's really neat to explore and see the city sitting from a Gondola, but not as heavy on the romance side of it. All in all it was awesome, and I'd def say completely worth it!
It rained pretty heavy our second day there which was pretty cool in that we could experience the elevated side walks...the St. Mark's church was all flooded as was the square back up into the maze of streets...but out come the elevated side walks and by late afternoon all as back to normal.
Since our train didn't leave until noon, we thought a couple of hours would be lots of time to get over to the train station....normally this would work...this time there were high tides and a strike on the boats!! WE did manage to get on the last running boat, but there was def a few stress moments in there...worse case scenario we could have paid the money for a water taxi as there was no way we felt confident to navigate through the streets on a short time frame to get to the train.
As a side note the train station ends at the Grand Canal, so either way flying in or taking the train is very cool. Certainly the train gives you that "wow" feeling when you walk through the doors and the water is coming up the "steps". Venice...certainly the coolest city ever!!!
We had a fantastic train ride through Italy back to nice and after some late night Gelato and great sleep, we're looking forward to exploring a medieval town, the small country of Monaco and then us girls are off shopping while the boys chill at a football game here!