Last day in paradise!! We docked into Venice around 7am about an hour earlier than expected. We got up made some coffee and ate our last breakfast (leftover pizza on our balcony). We had to be completely out of the room by 9am and weren't expecting to get off the boat until 10:50ish so we did the only reasonable thing: bloody mary's! After that we just wandered around the boat and surprisingly found stuff we had no idea was there! Like a basketball court with stadium seating and a life sized chess board! We got some more coffee and waited for our color to be called. We were aqua, and if there's one thing everybody knows about aqua is that it is always dead last!

We disembarked early and found our bags. We decided that we should take a taxi instead of trying to figure it out on our own. It was a quick ride, mostly due to the drivers ability to thread the needle. We got to the hotel around 10:30 and were surprised that they had our room all ready for us. If we ever come back to Venice we are definitely staying at the Holiday Inn. It's cheaper and the staff is nice and they have real shower doors!! Plus they have a shuttle that is relatively cheap that drops you right in the middle of Venice. It's definitely the way to go for a Venice trip.

We booked a spot on the shuttle but they didn't have an opening until 2:30 so we decided to walk around the neighborhood. We found a cute little wine shop where you can fill your own wine jugs. We kept walking and found a little coffee shop that had the best little cups of frozen coffee. Further down the road we discovered a bazaar!!! It was all clothes and kitchen utensils with a few vegetable stands and cheese shops. It was interesting to walk through it but there was nothing there for us. We walked back and stopped at a nice little pizza place. The beer I got cost just about as much as the pizza, but both were great! The wine shop was closed for lunch when we walked by and that distracted us and made us miss our street. It was no big deal, we just got a little longer of a walk.

After we finally made it back to the hotel we just had enough time to watch some national geographic, aka the only thing in English on the boob tube, before we had to catch the shuttle into Venice. Did you know that the Hong Kong airport is built on a man made island?

When we arrived in Venice we were surprised that it was nice to be back. It really is a great city and we had a blast there. And going back immediately erased any sour notes we had about it. The city was eerily deserted though and we saw across the canal that a group was gathering with flags at the train station. We didn't really pay attention to it. We were intent on finding our way back to our favorite restaurant and figured we could get there on our own. Tragically we were wrong. Though we did stumble upon the most amazing thing: egg mosaics! In from on a museum stood three very large portraits all made out of hand painted eggs. From a distance you could see the big picture, but up close it was made out of a thousand smaller, individual, egg shaped pieces of art.

We ended up on the wrong side of town. And as Kim stepped into a s*** shop I tried to sneak a peek at a map to figure out where we were but I got caught and the bitter old cobweb made me buy it because she said it was impossible to fold back up. I proved her wrong by folding it up perfectly before her eyes but she was still sour and unimpressed that I just performed the impossible. Anyway, now with a brand new map we trekked our way all the way to the opposite corner of the city. The first bad news we received after walking for a couple hours was that our restaurant was closed. The second piece of bad news we got was that the best way back to the square our shuttle would meet us was blocked by what had now become a very intense political rally. We got a front row view and there were riot police as far as the eye could see. It made for an exciting time and some good pictures but it really made it difficult to get to where we needed to be. We were very close but now we had to walk all the way around. Very annoying. You'd think that anarchists would at least have the decency to not block the main thoroughfare. In the end we had the last laugh because what those anarchists did not know is that we love walking above everything else in the world!

We eventually got to where we wanted to be, though we did make a quick stop for a wine spritz. It was quite magical, a little fruity, but with an olive which made it sophisticated. We decided to go back to our second favorite restaurant. There was a waiter from DC which was nice as we got to use real live words to order our food instead of jabbing at the menu. We ate our eats and drinked our dranks and got back on the shuttle.

Included in the price of our hotel room, besides the shuttle fare, was dinner. We were not that thrilled to go, but decided we should as we kind of already paid for it. There was only one waiter there to deal with a full house. A couple people left because they didn't like to wait. I would understand except that the circumstances called for some patience and understanding. The waiter, though frazzled at being the only one there, handled himself magnificently. Plus the food was beyond amazing. We both bit the carpaccio as our starter, then Kim had the walnut pasta and I had the veal. Both were some of the most delicious dishes we had on the trip. And for desert we had the tiramisu. Bomb!!

After drinking a liter of wine in Venice and another bottle at the restaurant we headed back to the room and kind of passed out. It was a great day!