Trip Report Day Eight

Day Eight: Sunday, July 2
(Okay I have zero notes on this day, and I’m writing this 12 days later, so I hope I remember everything that happened!)

Breakfast at the cheap hotel was better than breakfast at the castle. But that was probably the only thing better.  We loaded up the buses and headed to Venice. VENICE! I’m going to Venice! I’ve always dreamed of going to Venice and now I was. When we got to the parking lot, (you can’t drive into Venice… there are no cars in Venice, no streets, and definitely no buses in Venice) we were lucky to have a charter boat take us into town. When we got there, the first thing on our list of things to do was RIDE A GONDOLA!  We had a group of nine people gathered so we could split the costs (it still cost 20 euro per person). But hey, we were in Venice riding a gondola with our very own gondolier! (He even sang some!) It was so cool to float through Venice with good friends and see the sights the way Venice was meant to be seen. Next up was the tourist info place to get a map. We ended up not buying a map, but just making due with the little one I had.   We wanted to see San Marco Piazza. Whoa. Just like in all those movies! Beautiful. Theo had fun chasing the pigeons. We wandered around a bit and found a really nice place to eat a block away from the square. (READ: much cheaper than San Marco) The place we had would make fettucino Alfredo from scratch right at your table, so of course, we ordered that. No brainer. And it was divine!!! It was fun to watch, and even more fun to taste. I love Italian pasta! They know how to cook it just right!

So now we needed a few souveniers, so we shopped a little. Then we decided to go into the church. I guess not just ABC… (another big church) but the Basilica di San Marco. Wow. It was beautiful inside!

I did find some pretty Murano Glass necklaces and a bracelet. And I bought a gondola tee-shirt, and a gondola fridge magnet.

Then we decided we needed to figure out just where we were performing. We were to meet by a the Academia Bridge over the Grand Canal. A bunch of us found a bridge with that name on it, but it wasn’t over the Grand Canal. Eventually we found the right place, unloaded all the band stuff and hauled it done to the performance square a few blocks from San Marco. Really nice. I’m in Italy performing in a piazza! It was hot so we found a bit of shade, set up, and started our last performance in Italy. When we played Nessum Dorma, David had Billy perform his trombone solo in the direction of a cute girl in a window overlooking the square. Theo and Selwin gestured in her direction like, here this is for you. And then at the end, Claudio translated for the girl that the song was dedicated to her by Theo. His Julietta in the window. That’s how Theo got the nickname of Theo Romeo (pronounced Tay-o Ro-May-o).  Our performance was so much fun. I’m running out of adjectives to describe this amazing trip and performing in Italy. I really enjoyed everything.
After packing up our instruments, we said goodbye to Venice.

And began our last very long bus ride to our last hotel. This bus ride wasn’t supposed to be that long, but we ended up getting to the hotel really late. Again. Like at around 2 am. But what a hotel! A five star award winning hotel, that we really didn’t get to spend any time in. 


And we finally figured out how to turn the lights on.