Wow, ok I know its been a while since we’ve updated the blog, and hey probably most of you haven’t noticed, except for our die hard daily checkers, which that may consist of my mom and Cheryl…considering my mom is on this trip Cheryl here is the long awaited update!
June 11: My (E’s) mom arrived today, Leslie and I took the train from Cologne to Frankfurt Airport and met her. We took a taxi to pick up our rental car. Today is my first day driving in Europe, it’s a little unnerving since I have almost no idea what any of the signs mean and we just found out that in Italy we won’t have any support from the Rental Co because they don’t rent cars there….great. We got a little Audi A3 2.0 liter diesel wagon. It is really a nice car. It rained quite a bit and I thought there was a speed limit in the rain…130kph (~80mph), although I just found out that there is still no speed limit in the rain unless posted. Probably a good thing I didn’t know that at the time.
June 12: Packed for our trip to Austria and Italy. Worked on getting our 6 month pass…met with a guy, registered with our city that we live here, etc…
June 13: 10:45am and we are on our way, today is the first day for a nice sunny day driving on the Autobahn. Quite an experience, after doing this I know why the Germans build cars the way they do. When traffic was light we were able to drive 180-200kph (~112-124mph) typically, that is pretty fun and intense for a couple of hours in a row…very cool experience. Downhill we were able to hit 225kph (~140mph) one time that was about as much as the car had. Leslie was our trusty navigator, we had Mapquest directions, but they were pretty much worthless, thankfully she took control of the maps and kept us pointed in the right direction…almost all the time. Well enough of the driving stuff for now.
We arrived in Innsbruck in the evening, our hotel was great, right in the middle of the old town, close to the Inn river, and in the rain. We walked around the town a little bit and found a nice little restaurant close to the river that served pretty much everything, and I had a local beer, Zipfer.
June 14: Today we had a full day in Innsbruck, we didn’t really know what to do here so we started walking, breaking my mom into our way of traveling. The Winter Olympics were held here twice and they still have the huge ski jump looking over the city. We set out to walk up to it and get a view of the Austrian Alps. On the way we found a bunch of shops with local stuff and tourist crap as usual. On our way we also visited an impressive Rococo church at the edge of the city. We made it up to the ski jump and got some amazing views of the city and mountains, plus a pretty exciting jaywalking experience to get across a blind curve with cars flying by, it wasn’t exactly set up well for walking. We walked all the way back to the old town where we were staying and then took another walk to the gardens that were close by and finished up with a walk back along the river, the river ran very fast here out of the Alps. My mom and Leslie both bought some jewelry at Swarovski, they are located in Innsbruck and had an over the top store with lots of crystals, check out the pictures. We went to a little local pub within the old town for dinner and had some basic bar food, Austrian style, and another local beer, good as usual, much like Germany.
June 15: Packed up and headed for the meat or should I say pasta of our trip, we’re off to Venice today, leaving promptly in the morning at 10:45am again. Once again I’m a little nervous about driving since we are headed to Italy and I know it is not quite as orderly as Germany…or should I say kind of like Tijuana…but worse with Vespas everywhere in between. Although I’ll have to say since we were going only to Venice I didn’t really get any city driving opportunity until we hit Florence. And driving on the Autostrada (Italian Autobahn) is about the same but with speed limits (unfortunately). All was good except for heavy traffic just before getting into Venice, which we later found out was do to a tornado warning outside of the city and the bridge, into and out of Venice was closed. Once we got to the parking lot we caught a vaporetti (boat bus) to our hotel. No one was at the front desk when we got there so we scored some tea crackers from the breakfast room and checked out the view out of the balcony, overlooking a canal. Our room was near the Ca‘d’Oro stop and was recently renovated with air conditioning, a great plus for the area, last time Leslie and I were in Venice the air conditioning was not overly conditioning. We still ended up getting there early enough that we were able to get out and see the city, we were close to the Rialto bridge, so we headed there and Leslie and my mom shopped for some souvenirs. My mom ended up picking up a cool oil painting of Venice. Once the sun went down we sat down for a late dinner at an outdoor pizzeria, with a piano enticing walkers by. The food and music combined for the perfect Venetian atmosphere. We finished off the night with one of the great thrills of this trip; we walked to San Marcos square, which as usual is heavily covered in tourists, but at night much better than during the day. The orchestras were battling with each of there own versions of ‘Phantom of the Opera’, ‘New York, New York” and a plethora of other songs Leslie remembers. But unlike our last ‘dry’ trip to Venice the square was flooded and the remaining tourists were wading through the water with their pants rolled up and their shoes in their hands. Leslie was first to dive in and soon all three of us were enjoying the moment and scene. The pictures don’t quite do it justice but do give you a good idea of what it was like. The final note, not exactly the romantic finale you were looking for, but we did figure out how they fool tourists into walking away with all the pigeon poo that covers the square during the day….kind of gross, but hey when in Rome or Venice for that matter.
Also not to forget we started our Gelato tasting contest that would end up consisting of at least one to two Gelato stops per day.
June 16: Day 2 in Venice, Leslie froze her ass off in the room last night. After breakfast Leslie realized that her hair was messed up and sticking out so she used her curling iron to fix it and accidentally burnt the side of her face! (Leslie starts writing)… OK… so Eric, Denese, and I walked all over Venice today. It is such a cool place to just explore. Getting lost here is fun, so that is exactly what we set out to do. First we went to St Marks Square and went into the Basilica. The Basilica was covered in gold tiles on the inside. We then went to The Venetian Palace right next door. The Palace was were the Duke lived and all the governmental branches were located. The prison was across a canal and connected by a bridge named “The Bridge of Sighs” because of the beautiful view the prisoners saw through the windows as they were sent to the prisons. Many drawings and carvings were still in the prison cells. Then we went to get a bite to eat at a bar behind the Square. After we ate Eric and I took Denese to the Spiral Staircase, but unfortunately it was being renovated. Then we crossed the Accademia Bridge and walked to the Lagoon were the cruise shipped sailed in and out. Later that night we had dinner at “Trattoria agli Artisti” and I had the best pasta of our trip… shrimp, zucchini, tomato, and pasta with olive oil. After dinner we went to St Marks Square again for
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