Greece, Croatia, Venice, Home...

Ok, The last 4 days have been a bit of a whirlwind. At the end of the last post we had spent the day at sea....

The following day we ported at Corfu in Greece. We jumped a bus with our tour director and headed up the side of a mountain to Paliokastritza.... not sure on that spelling. The bus ride up the mountain was nothing short of amazing... both in the views, and the fact that we all lived! The road was barley wide enough for a normal car let alone a tour bus. There were so many switch backs up the mountain no one on the bus could believe that the driver was actually getting through them. Paliokatriza is considered to be the "Capri" of Greece. It was absolutely beautiful. The sun was shinning and it was warm out so that made it even better. While there we visited a monastery where monks still live. It was neat to see a Greek church. The views from the monastery were amazing, and while arriving we had to wait for a donkey to move off the road... pretty comical. From there we went to a village called Lakones were we had a traditional Greek lunch, complete with a guy playing the accordion and another playing this really weird guitar. Kelly and Karlie REALLY enjoyed them... I'm sure for more than there musical capabilities... lol After that we started our journey back down the other side of the mountain, again another crazy drive on a very small windy road. That night we went back to the boat, had a nice relax, grabbed a few drinks and watched Karaoke for a bit, and it the sack.

The next day was Croatia. None of us were really expecting too much from Croatia, mainly because none of us had ever thought to visit there, so we really didn't know too much abut it. This was going to be a fairly short tour as well (only 4 hours as opposed to the 8 and 9 hour tours we had been doing). I'm sue glad we took a tour. We were all quite amazed at how beautiful Croatia is. We ported in a town called Split. We jumped a bus and headed to their ancient part of the city called Salona. There we tour the ruins of the old city. Really neat to see. We got to wander through and old cemetery and allot of the marble caskets had bee dug up so that was cool to see. After an hour there we drove to a town called Trogir. This was one of our favorite stops. What a great little town. It was full of small winding streets and little squares. We had quite a bit of free time on this tour so we walked around just the four of us for a while, and found a small cafe/pizzeria in a tiny square. We decided to stop there for lunch. the guy could speak a lot of English, but he was willing to except Euros (in Croatia there currency is korners) so we stopped for lunch. By far the most AMAZING pizza we had ever had!!! They made everything fresh in house on a thin crust. Not only the pizza was amazing but the experience as well. Beautiful weather, great food good friends... couldn't have had it any better. Following lunch we headed back to the bus and it dropped us off down in the main part of town where the 4 of us wandered around for an hour or so, then jumped on a small boat that took us back to our cruise ship. A short hot tub, then dinner with a really cool going away show done by the waiting staff, watching of the Karaoke finals and a few drinks rounded out the day. We headed back to our rooms to pack, as the next day we would arrive in Venice Italy, and that would be the end of the cruise.

The following morning, we woke up and had breakfast overlooking Venice. It was hazy which made for a cool morning view of the city. After breakfast we proceeded to our meeting spot where we needed to be to get off the boat. Once we were off, we grabbed our bags and hopped in a cab to our hotel, which was by the airport and a little ways out of Venice. They had our room ready so we dropped our stuff off and then got a quick lesson on the bus system from the concierge, and then it was off to grab a bus and head into Venice. After wandering for a half an hour we managed to find the bus stop and get into Venice. From the moment we got off the bus, you knew you were in a special city. It dropped us off in Piazza De Roma, which is the main square coming in to town. The buses can't go any further in to the cty because it's all built on the water. We wader through all the people and over the grand Canal, which was an amazing sight, and then ended up wandering up and down some small streets along some of the canals. Within wandering for about a half an hour we ran into a Gondolier on a small side street. He had just dropped off a couple from a little tour and asked us if we were interested. We said yes, but before we jumped into his Gondola, he showed us this cute little coffee house were we stopped and got a few lattes, then it was into his Gondola, for a very memorable ride through the canals of Venice. What an experience. The Gondoliers name was Christian, and he was really nice. He told us about the city and whistled while he rowed. He even sang a little opera for us at one point... pretty much exactly what you'd expect in a movie or something. We traveled though some very small canals, where on each side of you were building were people had the laundry hanging out there windows and shutters on every window, really neat to see. After an amazing ride and tour of the city he dropped us off not far from Saint Marks Square. After we got lost on a few small streets, we managed to find the Square. It's HUGE! There were so many people there as well. Quite a contrast from just sitting in a Gondola rowing through the streets of Venice, with practically none on around, to a square where thousands of people were. We toured through Saint Marks Basilica. The art work was amazing in this church. Everything was done in a broken glass mosaic. I can't even imagine how long it must have taken to do all of it. After we toured through the church we wandered along the water front and checked out the views, then wandering back into some side streets along the canals, where we did some shopping. The ladies looked in a lot of Mariano glass shops!!! This glass work can really only be found in Italy and is quite amazing. We found a cool little sandwich shop for lunch. After shopping for a bit Kelly and I headed back to the waterfront to take a look at some local artists painting. We ended up buying a beautiful oil painting, can't wait to find a spot to put it. After that we met up with Karlie and Derek again for drinkings along the water. We then wandered some more until we stumbled upon the Rialto Bridge. There was some really cool shops round here so we took out time wandering, and found a great little pizzeria along the canals and stopped for dinner. It was pretty amazing finishing up our European trip sitting along the canal, have pizza and wine with good friends as the sunset on Venice Italy. After dinner it was a bit of a maze getting back to the bus stop. A cool adventure none the less. We stopped for some gelatto along the way. It started to rain a bit and it was getting pretty dark, but it all made for a cool atmosphere. We asked directions a few times and wandered the streets along the canals for quite a while before we found our way back to the bus stop. then it was back to the hotel for some sleep and an early wake up call (4 am) to get to the airport shortly after 5am.

We got to the airport, split ways with Karlie and Derek. They were heading though Vienna, and Frankfurt on their way home. We had one long stop in Amsterdam. We jumped the plane for a quick 1 1/2 hour flight to Amsterdam. We had a 6 hour layover so we explored the airport a bit, and read. Time seemed to go by fairly quickly. then it was onto our 9 hour flight home.... LONG!!!!

And we now back! After waking up at 4am this morning, I thought I should get up and finish up the blog for this trip. No it's time for a shower and off to work. Thanks for reading along with us. I'll try and post some picks here in the next few days, but I will post a bunch of pics on Facebook so feel free to pop by there and check them out.

Arevaderche from us!

The fol