May 16, 2008

We got up this morning and found that God had answered our prayers and given us a nice sunny morning, after last night's thundershowers. We had breakfast and quickly got on our way. While we were in Padova, we figured we may as well see if there's anything interesting in town. We found a cathedral, and Jan took some pictures, while I drove around, 'cause there were no parking spots, AGAIN! I ended up driving all over the place down narrow streets and finally returned to the square where I dropped Jan off. I was trying to figure out how to find her, since I came back from a different direction than before, but fortunately, she was waiting for me right where I came out of the alley.



We now decided to head to our next destination of Venice. On the map the distance from Padova to Venice shows as 25 km, but it took us close to an hour and a half to get there. We found signs pointing to "Parking + Boat = Venice" and eventually came to a parking lot which showed 8.00 Euro for up to 12 hours. I asked Jan to check on the price of tickets, and when she returned, and said go park the car, the ferry leaves in 15 minutes, I told her to start walking while I parked the car. We just managed to get to the boat before it left!

We got some great pictures, saw the canals and boats, and had lunch and some yummy Italian Gelatio. The canals here are utilized just like streets in any normal city. They haul freight, and people, with even a "bus" service, although it is a boat service. We then took the boat back to our car and got on our way to travel north towards the Alps.








And I just had to take a picture of this boat with the guy steering with one hand and talking on a cell phone with the other!

We are up high in the Dolomite Region of the Italian Alps; and I don't know why but these mountains are very different from the Rockies. I have gotten some beautiful shots and Bob stopped to get some great extra's that I couldn't get when we were driving. Cortina, where we will spend the night, is a popular Winter Ski Resort and we are lucky to find a hotel open. Out of 60 Hotels in the town only 5 are opened right now. Our host told us one of the better restaurants to go to as most of the restaurants are closed also.





They say that the Winter and summer seasons are busy but the Spring and Fall are dead. We don't know if we will be able to get this posted tonight or not as there is no Wi-Fi and we are not sure if any place has internet right now. Tomorrow we will travel down the Valley of Cortini and into Austria. We are hoping to get some beautiful pictures as the travel books all tell us of the great vistas you can see between here and Bolgona.