You may notice a couple of blue courts in some of my city photos.  This weekend they were having a 3v3 basketball tournament right in the center of town.  Of course one of the courts in on one of their famous bridges so I’m hoping that I can take a photo tomorrow before I leave of the famous bridge.

As if I needed help waking up for sunrise, this morning was a bit earlier for me.  There was an earthquake in Northern Italy and I felt the bed moving around 4:30.  I tried going back to sleep but I finally got up and started my day after I felt an aftershock in the 5:00 hour.  Sounds like there was some damage in Northern Italy.

You will notice a couple of photos that have locks on a bridge.  When people get married they go to the bridge and add a lock to the bridge.  Some are fancy and engraved with their names and some are written on the lock.  I really enjoy seeing the Julian Alps north of the city.  I was up at the castle pretty early in the day so the lighting made them pretty hard to see.

The hotel we are staying at is one of the best I have stayed at.  The free breakfast was amazing.  I was shocked when they brought up our luggage to the room and told us how to use everything in the room.  Even everything in the mini bar is free.  If you ever go to Ljubljana, stay at Hotel Cubo.

This morning we left crowded Venice for calm Ljubljana.  Our day included a boat to a train to a bus.  Everything went pretty smoothly until we waited for this so called bus.  For some reason, Italy stopped train service to Slovenia last fall.  There were also no flights available.  Car rental was very expensive.  The only option we could find was a direct bus from Venezia Mestre to Ljubljana.  There is one bus a day.  We bought our tickets a couple of weeks ago but there wasn’t much instruction on how to find the bus.  We saw on a travel site that someone said to leave the train station and cross the street.  We should find a colorful bus on the other side of the street.  We waited and waited for a nice colorful bus.  As time got closer, Bridget finally went and asked another bus driver where our bus was.  I watched the luggage as it wasn’t the nicest place to hang out.  He said that the gray mini van ahead was what we were looking for and we better hurry.  We get to this little van and there are already 6 other people in the van.  The driver had to adjust the luggage for my large suitcase and we had to sit in the front seat.  I had the middle front seat next to the driver and since it was a manual, I had no leg room.  We drove for a little over 2 hours and made it to Ljubljana. 

So after 2 nights in Venice, I can still say that even though the mass of people, it is well worth the visit.  This was my 4th time to Venice and I never get bored walking the canals and seeing how lost I can get.  I really recommend getting up early and seeing the city before all the cruise ships arrive.

Just my personal thoughts on Venice and Italy.  You can’t plan on having reliable internet service.  We had free interent in both hotels but it never worked.  The only sites that seemed to work were Italian websites.  Maybe they were screening what I wanted to do.  It was very frustrating.  Second, don’t count on having any TV to watch at night…you can’t even find the weather.  Lastly, the beds are most likely not comfortable.  The first night my bed and pillow were so hard that I actually dreamed that I was sleeping on a street and the curb was my pillow.  I had a pretty sore neck.  The second night the bed was a tad better but the pillow was flat as paper. 

I will leave you with some photos of Venice.  From the bridges to the canals, there is a new view every step you take.

Since I don’t have any knowledge about yachts I probably shouldn’t say much about the America’s Cup except that I thought it was pretty fascinating to watch.  This was my first yacht race and I actually didn’t know that watching yachts could be so entertaining.  We visited the village and walked around looking at the yachts.  We then headed to the lagoon near San Marco to find a place to watch.  All of the seats along the water were already taken so we had to stand.  Oh did I mention that it was sunny and I didn’t have any sunscreen on.  Since we didn’t know the race was taking place, I really wasn’t prepared to stand next to the water for a couple of hours.  The yachts did a couple of practice turns and then they disappeared for awhile.  We knew the race was about ready to start when all the helicopters started coming around the fans.  I’m amazed at how hard the yacht crews worked on getting the yachts turned and how far one side of the yacht can come out of the water.  As far as I can tell, Italy won this race by far.  I’m pretty sure South Korea and America hit yachts at one point.  I can now cross off watching a yacht race off my bucket list. (The last photo of the slideshow is an example of how many people were watching the race from one bridge.)

As we strolled around the city we came across a square that had the canal on one side and the church on the other.  And in between these two things were children playing soccer.  They would use parts of the church structure as the goals.  I really wanted to jump in and play but I thought I better just watch.  Occasionally one kid would kick the ball too hard and it would roll towards the canal.  Lucky for them, all the people walking by would stop the ball each time.  Not sure how many balls they have lost in their lifetime.

One thing about waking up early is that you get to see all the local people setting up for another busy day.  I saw a fire boat and some firemen who just put a fire out…which made me think, there are no smoke detectors in the hotel rooms here.  I saw plenty of garbage men and delivery boats delivering everything from beer to vegetables to laundry.  Strangely, I was fascinated by the fish market and watching them setup for the day.  I have no clue what some of the things were but I enjoyed watching it all take place.

I wonder how many different types of boats are located in Venice.  Pretty sure they have every boat imaginable here.  From cruise ships to gondolas, I’m pretty positive I have captured all of them.  Let me know if you think there is a boat I missed 😉

Venice is a beautiful city but it also comes with a price…people.  There are so many people in the city during the day that it is almost pointless to try to move around.  So I think the best thing to do is to wake up early and beat the crowds.  Both mornings in Venice I woke up early and got outside before the sun came up.  There were other photographers out and some runners but other than that it was such a lovely city to have to oneself.  There was a guy who had a tripod and little flip video camera.  He would set up the tripd and then start his movie.  You then would see him running and twirling around.  I saw him do this in San Marco square and then again on the Rialto bridge.  Pretty entertaining. 

A little blurb about waking up early.  Not sure I mentioned this but we had to move hotels after the first night in Venice.  It was a pain but the first place overbooked, and we got the boot.  In the first hotel, there was no reception.  We got to go and come as we pleased.  In the second hotel, there was reception and you had to turn your key in every time you left.  The funny part was that I assumed that the desk was covered 24 hours a day.  Our room was literally a door in the breakfast room.  I opened the door this morning at 5:30 and up jumped the lady working at the front desk.  She was sleeping the in breakfast room, and I just scared her to death.  She screamed “we we” a couple of times and then realized what was going on.  She scared me just as much as I wasn’t expecting a women sleeping in her pj’s right outside the door.  She asked what time we were coming back since I think she was mad that she was just woken up. 

(Here is a slideshow of the some of the photos from the wee hours in the morning.  If you need to see larger photos, you can click on the slideshow.)

We landed in Venice and the plan was to take a boat into the city.  Seemed easy but we didn’t know how long it would take.  We had to wait in line for about 45 minutes just to buy the ticket for the boat in the airport.  (It would have been helpful if somebody would say there is a ticket office outside where the boats are.)   Of course Italians are not great at lines.  Lucky for us we had two nice British women in front of us who really knew how to keep people out.  They made sure we stayed behind them.