Courtney Love and Horse Meat......our last night in Venice

So I had to blog one last time......first. Always, always, and I do mean always ask what is being served in the executive lounge of any hotel. Today, I made my way to the executive loung for a small snack and soda. I noticed from very nice sandwiches just being placed into the serving area. I decided to take a few....tomatoes, cheese, mayonnaise etc....then the very lovely looking roast beef cuts. I ate away. After eating most of the small cuts, a British couple that we have been interacting with throughout our stay in Venice entered the lounge. The lady is very upfront and has insisted on a couple of days that new food be brought out when Steven, her, her husband, or I have not liked what was being served. She has been polite, but always gets her way. Well come to find out she spends a lot of time in this hotel and has an apartment in Rome. Her husband retired last week. In short....very lovely couple that we have enjoyed talking with in the lounge.

Well she walks up to the sandwiches and immediately ask the hotel staff what kind of sandwich. Of which he replied back "meat of the horse." I catch this out of the corner of my ear and then hear her state loudly " are you saying horse meat." I look at my plate, look at her, look at the server and notice there is a partially eaten what I thought to be "roast beef" sandwich on my plate. The nice lady grabed her mouth and let out a yell, I jumped up and said "oh lord did you say horse meat" and handed the server my plate and asked him to get it away. The husband then stated "poor horse." it was a comedy at best.

The final story of Venice....we went to get gelato one final and I do mean final time. After ordering, Steven comes running over and said Cortney Love was the lady behind us and is ordering now. We walk back up and sure enough, bare feet and standing there ordering her gelato was Courtney Love.

One Bottle of Wine, One Pizza, Lasagna, and Spaghetti = ONE DINNER

We are miserable. First to think we have to leave this great country and Venice. Second, we cannot stop the madness. We are continuing to eat, and eat, and eat. The day was overcast, the first such day on our trip. We hung out at the hotel during the day and relaxed. Venice really is a city in which you enjoy the nights better. So, we made our way out to the city around 5pm. First on the stop today was a gondola ride. Yes, before you ask, we did have the serenade. It was so nice to wind down the canals of Venice with the music and just take in this wonderful city. We passed by the Opera House and the house of Mozart. There were four or five gondolas with the group and a guy was serenading the group. It was wonderful.

After the gondola ride, we made our way walking through the city and took in some small shopping for gifts. Needless to say, you can spend a small fortune here. Then off to dinner. This is where the night turned bad.

We ordered a pizza for an appetizer, a bottle of white wine (I love wine now), lasagna for me, and spaghetti for Steven. The pizza came and once again I made fool out of myself. I did not realize a lady from the next table was watching. Obviously they had just arrived in Venice and had not tried pizza yet. Steven and I cut a piece and as I took a bite, I once again let out this sigh and professed to the taste of the pizza. It was the BEST pizza we have eaten since being here. We were right on the Grand Canal and having dinner. Who could ask for more? The lady busted out laughing and therefore I noticed her. Of course, I could not help but talk to her and tell her how wonderful the pizza was. After a short conversation we found out her husband and her are from Nova Scotia. A very nice couple...so how do we prove to them the Pizza was wonderful....we cut of a quarter (using clean utensils of course) and send it over to their table. The waiter was laughing about sharing the food. We made our way through the wine, lasagna, and spaghetti. Walked our swollen bodies to the water bus and back to the hotel....only to enter the executive lounge and have dessert and sodas. Someone please ship some insulin. WE ARE IN NEED.

Tomorrow is our last day in Venice and we are sad. What a wonderful trip this has turned out to be. Great people, great tours, site seeing, and more importantly a time that Steven and I enjoyed each other. With Steven and I living apart, it really has been nice to get past everyday life and just spend several days together. To appreciate all the things that made us fall in love and continue to hold us together. It is not doubt that I have an amazing person in my life. I am looking forward to spending the rest of my life together with him and hopefully one day sitting beside him on a bench old as dirt and with white hair and having the honor of telling him how much I love him.

With that being said, tomorrow we will spend the time just wondering around Venice and enjoying each other. Friday we are off to Rome and then home. I do not anticipate blogging over the next couple of days. So to our parents and Aunt B...don't worry we are fine and we are taking care of each other. We love you!!!

The Train Ride to Venice

I know we are a couple of days behind on the blog, but we have enjoyed Venice so much we just have not turned on the computer. We started our Tuesday morning by making out way to the train station in Florence. I must admit, we were a little sad to be leaving Florence and wondering if Venice could even come close to how much we liked Florence. After finding the train we settled in for the approximate three hour train ride. The couple sitting by us was from Singapore, so much of the ride was spent trading travel stories. They were heading to Venice and then to Switzerland. I tell you about this couple for a reason (yes...there is a story there). So as we made a couple of stops on the train, Steven and I noticed that there were actually two stops in Venice, one being a greater distance from where we needed to be. It seems that in the booking of the train tickets I made a tactical error. I was unaware that Venice had two stops and booked the wrong stop, which was 15 minutes outside Venice proper. So after discovering this (thanks to Steven's keen eye) I became a little worried about how to handle the situation at hand. Well as with any tourist in an unknown world we did the logical thing....we became stowaways. Yes I am telling the truth. As the train approached our stop, the nice couple from Singapore and Steven made the executive decision we would stay on the train and hope for the best. Me, I was ready to get off the train and find a driver. I just saw this going very bad. So we sat there for the remainder of the ride waiting and looking for the attendant to make his/her way to check the tickets (as they did at every stop). Every time the door opened, I was looking for the red uniform and the words "ticket please." I can report, with much luck the train attendant never made it to our train car and yes....we can now say we have jumped a train (well in theory) without having a ticket.
The arrival in Venice was amazing to say the least. To walk out of the train station and be right on the water then to find a water bus to take us to the hotel we as so much fun. However, I must admit it is nice that the Hilton has it's own private water bus for its guest. This makes things a lot easier for us to get to different areas of Venice. After arriving at the hotel, we spent a couple of hours relaxing and then made out way to the Piazza San Marco. We did nothing more than walk around and enjoy the city. Looking at the shops, buildings and just enjoying the sites.