Thanks to everyone who has left us messages about our blog...we really like checking in to see what you've said and it is nice to feel like we are keeping in touch without having to email you all personally (yeah, basically we are just lazy). Now that we are in Venice and are staying in a hotel that has a reliable wireless connection we have finally been able to upload some photos and a video. Unfortunately for you, you're stuck with my 'point and click' photos and not Matt's spectacular, artsy shots. His camera is shooting at such a high resolution that they would be way to big too upload. Hopefully we'll get to share his with you when we get back.

We had a long day of travel yesterday in order to get from the Cinque Terre to Venice. We had to take the train back to Milan (about 3 hours) and then caught a fast Eurostar train to Venice (2 1/2 hours). We are loving travelling by train. It is so relaxing and we get to enjoy seeing so much of the Italian countryside. Matt has been using some of the travel time to perfect his Italian, listening to Italian lessons on the iPod and reading the phrasebooks. So far, both of us are relying on the phrase 'Io non capisco l'italiano', which means 'I do not understand Italian'. We have found that most Italians have enough English to then help us out, or we do the charades thing and eventually get what we want.

Venice was pretty hot when we got here and we both are pretty sore from the many up and down trips to and from our Bed and Breakfast in Vernazza. This made for kind of a cranky first impression of Venice. Loaded up with our backpacks we really just wanted to get to the air conditioning of our hotel. While both a little irritable, we finally found the hotel and got a chance to relax. It's only a two star, but it is pretty nice and decorated in full Venetian style with satin fabric covering the walls and antique furniture..oh, and did I mention it was air conditioned?

After a short rest, we ventured out to get some food. We were both starving having had our last meal at breakfast. We decided to find a restaurant that was recommended in Rick Steve's book, but it was all the way across the city. The streets here are almost impossible to track on a map, a wide street suddenly turns into an alleyway, then goes under a walkway through a building out the other side, and over a bridge...yikes. We got thoroughly lost, you know who had a little 'spaz', and then we settled on a simple pizzeria along the way. We were not really in the mood for Venice after such a long day, so we headed back to the hotel and called it a night.