Italia.... fills my soul with happiness

So, Italy happened. AH- MAZING. Beautiful country, beautiful people, beautiful language, and don't even get me started on the FOOD! We went for 10 days in December right before Christmas. It was truly the trip of a lifetime and to say that we had a great time is an understatement. I'm gonna break up my posts of Italy into cities. We have SOOO many pictures and it's hard to choose.

We'll start with Venice... oh Venice, I love you.

We arrived in Venice at about 10 am Italy time... and about 2 am our time. Our internal clocks were slightly messed up, and when I say slightly I mean ridiculously messed up of course.
But we didn't let that stop us... yet.

  We were like a couple of giddy school girls when we first arrived in Venice.... actually basically the whole trip. It really is an incredible city... I couldn't get over how crazy it was to have a city built entirely on water. I guess I'd always known/heard that Venice was built on the water and that you use boats to get around but I just didn't picture that there would be NO cars. I loved that about it. You just walk wherever you need to get.

Isn't he cute? Blake was a lifesaver to have on this trip, he was worried that he would have a hard time speaking and understanding the language because he just doesn't get oppportunities to speak it here but he didn't miss a beat! It was so fun watching him, and picturing him as a little missionary in Italy. It was so nice that he could ask the natives for directions and suggestions wherever we were.

 

 This hot nutella crepe... blew me away..

 

St. Mark's square. Such a beautiful cathedral. It was flooded the first day we were there but the second day it cleared up luckily!

 

 Fun fact for ya: Blake sent me this hat from Italy when he was on his mission. I wore it thinking maybe I'd fit in..... just maybe

Where is Waldo? I never realized how much I stuck out until I went through our pictures and noticed I am basically the only one not wearing black in every picture.  No wonder wherever we went they asked if I spoke English.

 

Courtesy of Blake's artistic eye.

 

Our internal clocks did catch up to us in a most unfortunate way. We took a 'brief' 3 hour nap at about 2 in the afternoon on the first day because we were starting to drag. But then we couldn't sleep AT ALL the first night, it was the weirdest feeling, and so unlike me to be wide awake in the wee hours of the night. We finally fell asleep at about 5 am and then Blake woke me up after what seemd to me to be a short rest. Blake asked me what time I thought it was and I said 10 am. Which was just slightly off, it was 3 pm. YIKES!! But don't worry we made the most of the day and stayed out late and walked until our legs burned. The worst part is it was a vicious cycle, we couldn't sleep the 2nd night either. But we made ourselves stay awake the whole next day to get back on track and we didn't let that happen again.

We loved Venezia and the pictures just don't do it justice, especially our blurry pictures.

 

Next up: Rimini!