Venice, Italy

The last leg of our trip was Venice.  When traveling internationally, I expect things to go wrong, but I think it's safe to say that Venice was where Murphy's law took full effect.  It all started with us getting off one stop early on the train ride from Florence to Venice and then having to take the bus to our hotel.  Then, we missed our stop by a 30 mins walk, so we had to drag our luggage in the rain and back track.  We finally made it and after taking a short break in our hotel room, we ventured off into Venice.

We ate at Pontini, a restaurant we found on Yelp.  The waiter was super energetic and the food was delicious!

I finally understand what people mean when they say to "get lost in the streets of Venice".  It is very easy to get lost as you take turn after turn with sensory overload over all the beautiful sites, stores and eateries.

So when it came time to check out, the hotel accused us of not paying our bar bill of 15 Euros the evening before.  I am 110% sure we paid them, but they did not document our payment, so we were delayed by 25 mins and had our train to catch to head back to Rome.  Needless to say, we missed our train and I had to buy 4 new tickets and were delayed by an hour.  I am a big baby and cried after that because I just absolutely hate wasting money and didn't think it was "fair" that we had to pay the price for the hotel's stupidity.  You can be sure I will file a complaint with the hotel to get every penny back!

All in all, I had a good birthday in Italy, but it is truly nice to be back home again!!  I am so grateful that my parents took good care of Echo while we were gone.  They took him to daycare everyday and picked him up after they got off work.  They sent me countless videos and photos so that it would make being away from him easier.  They also bought him a brand new toy and fed him an apple everyday as a little treat - he definitely gets spoiled over there!  I am lucky to have such amazing parents!