Wednesday, April 15

Hello All!!

Hope all is well out there. We just got back from our tour of Italy (Venice, Florence, and Pisa). It was beautiful and the weather was fantastic. Above our just a few of our thousand pictures!!

Driving through the Alps in Switzerland was amazing - can't believe how many tunnels there are!! We drove through the longest tunnel we have ever been through something around 17 km :-) Brenna started announcing when we were going through each tunnel. I will now think of Switzerland as the land with the Alps and tunnels, lol!! Venice was amazing (this may be my favorite word of the post!) - loved the buildings, water, and shops. The hotel was awesome and they really loved Brenna there. Wish I would have thought about the water and mosquitoes - Brenna and Dustin got eaten up. Brenna has the most awful reaction to the bites - they get puss filled and burst pretty quickly when they are on her face - and she got about 5 (including two on her nose and one on her ear). We rode a gondola - expensive, but once in lifetime experience (too bad Brenna won't remember it!). I'm sure Brenna would have been just as happy riding any boat - she loved the faster taxi to the Murano glass factory. Our hotel was just a short walk from San Marco square - so I got some great sunrise pictures. Dustin was even able to get two runs in on the island. Venice is an easy place to get lost in and we had a great time just wondering along the streets (and eating Gelato for Brenna) :-) After 3 great days in Venice, we drove to Pisa and Florence. We just had a quick stop in Pisa - just enough time to get about 100 pictures (or more) of the leaning tower, lol :-) We had one full day in Florence and we think we did a pretty good job making the most of it. Of course, Brenna enjoyed more Gelato and our hotel was again just a short walk from everything. We went early and saw the Statue of David and one of the churches close by (it had several names - I think Duomo was one). We walked across the famous bridge there (it was neat with all the goldsmith shops) - and then walked to a museum with outside gardens for Brenna. It had amazing views of downtown Florence and was a good energy killer for Brenna. I think Brenna found the only merry-go-around in downtown Florence and of course she really wanted a ride :-) It was some long car rides, but everyone did really well :-) I got great pictures of all of us (today looks like my day with Brenna - I will have to post Dustin and Brenna's great pictures tomorrow).

Well, that is it for today - hope you enjoy just a few of our pictures :-)

Take Care!