Our day in Venice

Hotel Venice Villa Dori
It was a really nice place as you can see plus it's about 1200 years old. The people were nice and the service was good and it was relatively easy to get to from Venice. Plus super cheap at 33 euros each, considering we booked only the night before.

So we dropped off our stuff and headed into Venice. We were very fortunate to have arrived on a day which was pretty quiet tourist wise. we decided that Venice was not a place to be indoors, visiting museums and such.

We had such a fun time moseying down random streets, enjoying the funky bits and bobs of fascinating Venetian architecture; enjoying as many culinary delights as our stomaches would allow us; soaking up the last of the summer rays as we sailed around Venice via public transport; and studiously avoiding the tourist bustle.

An absolute must see is the Basilica, which has many of it's own little tourist attractions, all of which you pay separately for, but only a minor fee. Make sure you deposit your bags to the "bag deposit place"(sorry, can't remember the correct word for it) before you try to enter, to save yourself having to queue first. Plus, don't get put off by the queue. It may look long but it moves very quickly. Both times we queued, heh heh, we were at the front within about 5 mins.

Typically, Venice is the first place we bought maps for, and we didn't use them.

A welcome home trip-Venice

Greg's been working pretty hard this year and especially during the summer holidays trying to get his paper out. Which meant no trips anywhere for the family:( So when Jordy returned from NZ we wanted to do something together before school really started going.

On Thursday we decided to travel to Italy. Monza was the 1st choice and we were pretty surprised that Jordan was so eager keen to go to the Formula 1 but she was just excited about going to Italy.

That plan got scrapped for a cheaper option -Venice. Only $200NZ each return by train. The train went via Salzburg,(about 300km from Vienna), to Venice(another 280km). Just to get from Christchurch to Wellington(300km)one way, by train, as a special, it's $99NZ.

This train ride went up to Salzburg first where we stayed in the railway yard for a couple of hours and then went on to a few other places where we stayed in the yard again. So all up the trip took 12 hours. We could have gotten an earlier train but then we would have arrived at 3.30am which is not really that convenient.

The people sharing our apartment were pretty funny as they would not let go of their bags the whole trip. We thought it was us they were being paranoid about but later we found out that apparently the italian trips are meant to be "dangerous" and rife with pickpockets and people piping sleeping gas into our compartment so that you'll fall asleep and they can rob you.

They could have just robbed us when we went for a walk and left everything lying all over the place like we do. Typical kiwis.

Jordans home

Jordy's home! yay. Jordy's home! yay! Whilst Jordy was away, I decided to renovate her room just a little. My womanly talents in that area seem to be somewhat lacking, so after I had moved the bed to the other end of the room, I had used up the full extent of my ideas.

A few days before Jordan was due, I suddenly was inspired. I help my friend decorate her boxes and furniture using the serviette technique so I decided to use it on Jordan's cupboard. The pattern I had chosen to use was a little more painstaking than I had bargained for(ivy). Greg was worried that Jordan wouldn't like it and all this effort would have been wasted but I was pretty confident I knew my girl. I gave Greg a minor heart attack when I was toying with paint, heh heh, but that's another story.

I gave Greg a minor heart attack when I was toying with paint, heh heh, but that's another story.

I also added a few boxes to store exercise books in, some organisational boxes for clothing, a rubbish bin which is sadly still sitting in Greg's office, a mirror which is waiting to be put up and is sitting on Jordan's chair, and some nice photos of Jordan and her friends that I found.

The other picture may look random but it's meant to be one of Greg looking really excited as we wait for Jordan at the airport, but he ducked at the last minute.