Things started right back up when we got home. I ended up needing to go to campus on Monday for some meetings so it was good that we were back a bit early.
Wednesday was my 33rd birthday so we celebrated it most of the week, as one does!
Coming down to gifts is a personal favorite
Jackson got me a little bluetooth speaker for use at the beach. I'd wanted one for a long time so I was super excited. My Mom and Guy got me new noise-canceling headphones (I finally wore out the last pair they'd gotten me back in maybe 2010) that are wireless and amazing. I guess 33 requires all wireless listening capabilities- ha! :) I also got lots of gift cards and cash which is never a bad thing. :)
She's so cute in her bandana
MacKenzie celebrated the day and tolerated wearing her birthday bandana again. I cannot deal with how cute she is. Honestly.
Susie made me a s'more pie IT WAS AMAZING
This year I just did not want to go out to eat to celebrate. We'd been dining out so much while traveling that homemade food just sounded better. Susie made her best dish (in the birthday girl's opinion), chicken piccata.
Jackson enjoys the chicken piccata, too!
Overall, though, we kept things pretty lowkey since we'd just celebrated Jackson's big 4-0 for weeks.
A little end of the birthday week celebration at Chuy's
It was a much better birthday than last year so that's nice. :)
We got home on Thursday night and started laundry before just crashing out. I woke up without a clue where I was in middle of the night. I finally realized I was home and went back to sleep. We were both shocked in the morning to find that we'd actually lost weight on vacation. Who goes on a cruise and spends a week eating nothing but pasta and pizza and loses weight? Us! I was down over 5 pounds and Jackson was down over 3. Crazy!!
We had right at zero food in the house so we decided to go get breakfast together before tackling our work email inboxes. Jackson loves Bob Evans so I relented and we went there. It turned out to be awesome. Perhaps we were just jaded from terrible service in Europe, but our waiter was awesome. We left him a $13 tip on a $20 bill. I bet he wishes he served more jet-lagged folks! :)
Doesn't get more American! HA!
We both worked the entire day just trying to catch up on things. It is funny how being out for two weeks might as well be a lifetime! For dinner we hit up the spot that had been on my list, of course, Chuy's!
Queso and salsa? YES, PLEASE!
We decided that we'd gain all the weight we lost on vacation back if we continued eating this way so we stopped at the grocery. Lame. :) In exciting news, House of Cards' new season premiered while we were away so we snuggled on the couch to catch up with one of our favorite shows.
We were excited to make ourselves breakfast on Saturday and spent most of the day just catching up on laundry and rest. My folks needed to run errands in Indy so they dropped Ella by for a playdate. She just had her lady parts removed so she was more subdued than normal which fit MacKenzie jsut fine!
Buddies. For now.
That evening MacKenzie went to Grammy's to hangout and we took a long bike ride around Geist. It was fun to stretch our legs again after so much train, plane and car time.
Sunday was more of the same. Being bums and watching t.v. preparing for a busy week. The unexpected weekend at home was not as bad as I'd imagined it would be. We had an awesome trip, but home is always nice, too!
I know by now you're reading these posts and saying to yourselves, "Gosh, Rome was lame for you guys. You have saved vacation days and just come home after the cruise." We agreed. Until we got to Venice.
Excited about our train
They gave awesome goodie bags on board!
The train was SO nice. I was concerned because we went for business class instead of first class to save a few bucks. Nope, did not matter. The train was brand new and so nice. We ended up with a whole table to ourselves so we got to stretch out and get comfortable. I blogged for the whole trip and Jackson played games on his iPad. They said the train had wifi, but we never figured it out. That's OK. We'd kind of take turns looking out the window at the gorgeous countryside flying by and tell each other to look out at special castles or other things of note. The trip did make us want to return to explore the Tuscany area. We eventually made it to Venice and made our way to the vaporetto (a water bus) to head towards our hotel.
We made it! On a boat headed to the hotel
The famous Grand Canal
Unable to control our excitement
A church right on the water
Making our way to the hotel
I should mention that Jackson specifically asked me to map from the train station to our hotel on my phone ahead of time so that we would not get lost. I did this and snapped a photo of the screen. Except I only showed which boat to take and didn't get walking directions from the stop where we'd disembark. CRAP!! We were SO LOST. Our phones did not work even though we'd paid Verizon for them to work all over Europe. We finally found a kind cafe owner who let us use his internet to get a map going on our phone. Whew! A few blocks later and we'd made it to our hotel.
To say that we were nervous for this hotel is an understatement. European rooms are notoriously small and outdated. Not this one! The hotel was lovely. Our room was large, had central air conditioning and a shower of one's dreams! We dropped off our things and then decided to see some of the city before it was too dark.
Looking across the Grand Canal
THIS IS SO COOL
St Mark's Campanile
St. Mark's Basilica
St. Mark's Square
Petefish
We promptly went to the Hard Rock Cafe to get Mom her final pin (4 on this trip!!) before finding a spot for dinner.
Pasta for dinner, of course
We were suckers and ate right on the Grand Canal. We paid more for it, but I did not care (for once).
Garbage collection from the canals
The next morning we were up early and got to see some of the work behind the magic of the city. All of my reading said that staying in Venice was the key to enjoying it because the mornings and evenings were the best times to explore. During the day cruise ships drop off hoards of people so you can barely move. The books and blogs I read where correct. We could not believe the calm place we'd come into last evening and meandered around that morning had become a madhouse in a matter of hours.
Gorgeous church
Quick breakfast
We learned a trick that if you eat standing up at the counters in cafes you do not pay the service charges. This means you get breakfast for closer to $8 than $25. SOLD! We'll stand!
The view from the Accademia bridge
Petefish.
A busy body of water
Water taxis
Rialto Bridge
"Support"
An art installation about climate change impacting
Venice
Gorgeous churches everywhere
We walked around all morning before deciding that it was just too crowded so we'd follow the Italian lead and take a nap during the midday. We're lucky that we did as it began to pour down rain just as we got to our room. Tourists and rain do not mix. People freak out and use umbrellas places that they should not. It is never pretty in any city. Luckily, we just napped right through the storm and went back out after it had passed. Winning!
Lovin' exploring the city
Lunch on a canal
Enjoying this view, too! ;)
ICE AND LEMON IN MY WATER
YESSSSS
What else? PIZZA!
We decided to hop on a vaporetto to San Giorgio Maggiore (a little island across from Venice) to get views back to the city itself. There is a "campanile" (bell tower) attached to a church on the island so we paid 3 Euros each to go to the top for even more dramatic views back over to Venice. It was amazing and because the whole thing was brick I was not even scared up there. Hooray!
Looking back at Venice
Ahhh the views were amazing
Storms cleared right up!
Petefish.
Another Venice view
Quite the garden!
We wanted to tour St. Mark's so we headed back to Venice only to get swallowed by crowds again. By the time we finally got to the church visiting hours were over. Dangit!
CHAOS!
Oh well, we just kept walking around the city taking it all in. You could spend months there and not see it all!
We decided that the previous night's dinner was so good that we'd return to the same spot. This evening's meal was not as good but that was because another storm rolled in and it got REALLY cold. This meant our food was cold by the time we got it so that was a bummer. It was great people watching, though!
We'd purchased a 24 hour pass for the boats so we decided to take an evening cruise around the city. It was SO COLD and SO WINDY that we were the only fools willing to ride on the outside of the boat. It made it kind of romantic in a freezing cold way.
Freezing, but enjoying the views
We wish this was our ride!
Rialto bridge again!
My favorite building in all of Venice
Our evening cruise last 1.5 hours and we saw the whole city. It was great! By the end, though, we were frozen and so ready for a hot shower. We never thought we'd be cold again after Rome!!
The next morning we got up early to go grab breakfast and practice getting our ride to the airport (I did NOT want to be lost with luggage again). We found that their breakfasts were typical lunches here: sandwiches served with espresso!
Breakfast cappuccinos
We made it to our airport shuttle boat without an issue thanks to the trial run. We were at the airport in plenty of time because we just did not trust that the Italians would move with any haste on our luggage so we did not want to test them. :)
Lugging his gear over bridges* *He overpacked.
Even their ER is on the water!!
Oh, I've not noted that we were not originally going home from Venice. We were supposed to rent a car there and head to Lake Como and then end in Milan to fly home from there. As it turns out, renting a car in Italy is a huge hassle and some roads were closed that would make our journeys really, really long. They also wanted you to have background checks to rent a car and we'd heard horror stories of folks being robbed blind by the rental car companies. We decided that we were tired and had seen enough so the kind folks at United changed our award tickets to accommodate our new schedule. They did charge us $250 which sucked, but we saved money on hotels and the rental car.
We had a quick flight from Venice to Frankfurt, Germany. We offered to "help" by taking the exit row which meant we sat with the flight attendant (their planes are a little different). She was from Frankfurt and was just lovely. She even gave us extra cookies (they were amazing) to take on our next flight and gave us directions on how to make our tight connection. We loved her!
We RAN (literally) through the Frankfurt airport, clearing immigration as fast a humanly possible and getting to our flight as it was boarding. WHEW! Made it! We ended up with a row of 3 to ourselves so we got to stretch out for the easy 7.5 hour flight to Chicago. I'm tell you, do a 16.5 hour flight to Australia one time and every other flight seems quick!
We RAN (again) through Chicago to catch our connection to Indy. We were so hungry but did not have time to eat in Germany or Chicago. I don't do plane food much. It is usually pretty gross. We made the flight to Indy and Susan picked us up around 11:30 pm. All of our luggage made it! A miracle! We made Susan stop at Taco Bell for us on the way home and "American" food had never tasted better! :)
The moral of the story? Skip Rome and visit Venice instead (before it sinks).
