Ahhh, Venice.

Or, should I title this post "The Continuing Adventures of Lucy and Dufus".

(Click here for theme music.)

No, wait. 

I'm thinking this theme music is better.

With this picture.

That's it. See us coming out of the mist?

Huh. No, really. We were all that in Venice.

Yeah. That's it. That's how I remember it, now.

What down comforter?

We were up all night!!

Starting with the "blue hour"...

O.k., not really.

In fact, here is Lauren's photo for the night:

Carol was trying all the manual settings on her camera and by this point, Lauren took my camera, set it on the bride over the canal, (to steady it) hit the shutter and said, "BAM. Picture taken." Then she took it and whirled it around and said, "There. Night time motion." "Let's go."

What happened to youth?

Sigh.

Anyway, let's look at gondolas:

And Saint Mark's Cathedral.

(For some fascinating information on this Cathedral, click here.)

This was the Mod Squad's last day in Venice. Lucy kept wanting to see some church made up of blue and white tile. Did I mention Lucy just turned sixty and kicked Dufus's butt walking all over Venice?

Lauren and Dufus said, "oohh-kay."

And away they began to tromp.

Then Lucy stopped in front of St. Mark's Cathedral and said, "But we really shouldn't miss this. Should we just see this church? Or march onward toward who knows where to find the blue and white church?"

"I don't care" says Dufus, always the trooper. (?)

"Well," said Lucy, "This IS pretty amazing, and I'm not sure where the blue and white church is....."

"I don't care" said Dufus, who's feet were throbbing, even though she had spent the day before under a down comforter. 

They stayed and visited St. Mark's.

Which was way cool.

These are the bronze replicas of the original horses.

The original horses in the Cathedral's museum:

Then they hot-footed it over to the bell tower for a 10 story view of Venice.

Yeah.

Way cool.

I have to say, I flipped a little bit. Take a look:

All of this is built on a framework that is submerged into a hundred submerged islands in the midst of a lagoon.

Thus the trip to Venice came to an end.

Oh, wait.

Getting back onto the train....

Well, you see, there are a number of water buses to take. Such as, 15. Or 51. Or....

It just so happens the water bus, otherwise known as Vaporeto (minus vaporeto police) they chose took for. ever.

Lucy anxiously asked, "Should we just get off and take a water taxi directly to the train station?"

Dufus asked the bus attendant how long she thought it would take them to get to the train station. "About 30 minutes." was the answer. Uhhhh....they only had about 35 minutes to get on board the train. "You could always hop off at the next stop and walk. That would be faster" said the nice bus attendant.

See this map?

On the lower right quadrant, you see S. MARCO. We started there. We had to follow the red line all the way up to the upper left quadrant in yellow marked TRAIN STATION. When the nice attendant suggested we could walk faster, we were about 5 stops away from the train station. With our luggage. Not one of us thought we could figure out the maze of streets and bridges to get us to the Train Station, so we stayed on the Vaporeto.

We made it to the station with 3 minutes to spare and realized we couldn't figure out which train was ours. Lauren bolted over to the information center and they directed us to the correct train, which we boarded and as soon as our bags came in after us, the train began to pull out.

WHEW. 

Oh, yeah! The Mod Squad can hustle, baby!!

Riiiiight.

The next post will be the last one in our Tour of Italy. 

I can't tell you how much fun it has been to share this with all of you and to somewhat "extend" my trip!

Stay tuned for the last post, there will be a surprise at the end!

xo

Dufus.