Long part of the story short, we spend up until 8pm to 4 am arranging our things into small enough bags to fit onto the plane so we don’t have to check them. It was time to wake up at 7 am to head to Venice. We get showered and ready and stop at a little store nearby to grab some sandwiches and snacks for the 8 hour train ride. We get on the train and everything is working out so far except for that its raining… we get into Venice at around 4:30 and I had been there before and it was still nothing short of gorgeous, even in the rain!  We take a water taxi to St. Marks Square and then find our hotel. It was about a 5 minutes walk from the square and in a perfect location! So we get dressed and ready to hit the town. We walk around, shop, hang out in the square with all the pigeons and vendors etc. we wanted to go into the church but it had been closed so we decided to look for a nice restaurant. DO NOT JUDGE A BOOK BY ITS COVER. This restaurant was the cutest little restaurant I have ever seen and I was so ready for the amazing meal to follow… UNTIL… they brought out the bread… toasted potato rolls!  In Italy that should be a herecy! So I was doomed when our appetizer of shrimp cocktail came out. I guess we Americans are spoiled with our fresh, jumbo size shrimp, with ketchup and radish to make the cocktail sauce, because in italy you get small, shrimp in a can the size of your fingernail dipped in a ketchup and mayonnaise cocktail sauce. I didn’t eat it. I was still hopeful for my ricotta stuffed tortellinis with spinach and alfredo. That was a let down, so I conned tino into letting me eat some of his spaghetti and meatballs. It is official the most horrible dinner I ever had while in italy was in Venice. It’s a shame we  couldn’t afford the 300 euro meals at the real venetian restaurants… maybe I would have enjoyed it more. So we walked around some more and came across a classical concert. They were opening with Bach and then playing the four seasons by Vivaldi. I was thrilled, tino was not. So I begged and begged that we buy tickets and we did and while he slept through the entire performance I thoroughly enjoyed every second of it. =] by that time it was around 11 and we had a big day ahead of us so we stopped into a gelateria and had some gelato and then made our way back to the hotel to sleep. Bright and early we wake up and head over to the square again to try and see the cathedral. We go in and it was arguably the most gorgeous church in Italy… note that not even the VATICAN was this gorgeous.

We go in and take pictures and take a tour and bought some things and then headed out to the canal to try and find a gondola that was willing to take us out since it was raining. We found a few in the square and they were about 120 euro so we said no and found one for 80 euro, still very expensive, but well worth it. You can’t go to Venice and NOT take a gondola ride. It was so cute, the little old man sang Italian opera and pointed out Cassanova’s vacation home and all the old royal palaces and libraries. After the gondola we went back to the hotel to get our things and make our way to Milan to catch the plane to Prague. So after walking around a little bit more and shopping some more we get on the train to Milan, get off and take a bus to a nearby city called Bergamo and checked into our flight. All the re-arranging we did previously was not worth it at all because even if the bags weren’t packed with things they still didn’t make the regulations for carry on luggage. So we took almost everything out of my bag, and put it into tino’s duffle bag and checked his bag so that we didn’t have to pay for 2 bags. We get to our terminal and we exchange our money for Czech money! So excited when you hand someone two 50 euro bills and they hand you back a 1000 czech bill! Sad to say it wasn’t worth much, but it looked cool.  So we board the plane and sleep the whole hour and half there and we arrive in Prague at about 10:30 at night. We get off the plane and our driver held a sign that said “Miss Carla Cefalone” !!! I ALWAYS WANTED THAT TO HAPPEN!! So cute! So we didn’t really know what to say it was pretty awkward because we don’t know Czech so we kind of smiled at eachother and he led the way… and then the adventure began…