Italy Day 1 and Italy Day 2

Hello! Skyler and I just recently returned from our trip to Italy. Although it may appear that I went to Italy by myself, Skyler can be found in some of the pictures too. Right before we left he got a new camera and he took almost 1500 pictures on our trip. Although this may bore most people, I am going to blog each day of our trip separately. This is my only way of recording our trip so I want to make sure that I keep track of what happened which day, etc. Enjoy!


Saturday morning (5/16): Our flight left at 6:40 am...without us. Skyler's dad picked us up 30 minutes late and he had to stop to get gas on the way. We missed our flight. Just the beginning of an awful day. Delta rescheduled us for a new flight, but didn't tell us until right before that we were on standby. Flight was full and we watched another airplane leave without us. We got a new flight plan, but we had to wait until 3:00pm to leave and we would be arriving almost 12 hours after we were supposed to. It was a rough morning.


Our flight took us through Atlanta where we literally were running to our next flight. We were the last people checked in and we made it by about 5 minutes. That was our only flight that left on time.


Our next flight took us through Paris. I saw the Eiffel tower from the plane window! We flew on Air France (the same airline which had that crash a few days ago) and they had the best in-flight snacks I have ever had. I wanted to ask for another tray.


We made it to Venice on Sunday night, only to find that just one of our bags (1 of 3) made it to Venice with us. Argh! We filed a claim, but they have no way of telling us where the other bags are. Of course our lost luggage has all of our camping and bike stuff. There is no way that we can continue our trip without those bags.

We loaded onto our first water taxi for a 60 minute ride to Venice. Water taxis are so expensive there and they are the only option. It was about $10 every time we needed to use one.


We were so excited to get to our hotel because I had booked a room at the Hilton Molino Stucky, a new hotel in Venice (you can see it in the background of the next picture). It even had a swimming pool on the roof. We got a great deal on it.

We arrived at the hotel and received more bad news. Our room was not available due to water issues. Skyler had to tell me to take a walk because I was so upset. It was not a good day. We got a free taxi ride to our new hotel, about 5 minutes away. This is me crying as we drive away from our hotel.


The new hotel was not so bad, but it was no Hilton. We got our first view of a bidet. Skyler loved it!


Since I did not have any of my clothes or toiletries, I had to wear the same clothes that I had been wearing for two days to dinner. I attempted to wash my hair. I thought I was using conditioner, but it turned out that it was lotion. Now my head is a giant greaseball.

Dinner was pretty great though. We were in Venice! There were gondola boats everywhere. We ate dinner at a little place next to a canal. It was a great first meal.


Venice is a beautiful city! I wish that circumstances would have allowed us to enjoy it more, instead of worrying about lost luggage and other problems. We were supposed to start our biking adventure the next day, but it was put on hold.