Venito: Bellissimo!

The last stop on our Italian vacation was Venice. Beautiful Venice. We turned in the rental car at Marco Polo Airport (thank goodness!) and hopped on a water bus that took us to the island that is Venice. Venice is an island (actually 117 of them connected by bridges) that has absolutely no cars. What a welcome change! We walked most everywhere we went while there. The only other option is to take some type of boat. On our first night there we found that the map given to us by the hotel was nearly completely useless: the millions of little side streets and alleys that makes up Venice are not on the map. This took some getting used to for Steve. I, however, liked just wandering down streets, finding unexpected things around each corner, hoping you were walking in the right direction. On our first night there we ate in an enchanting restaurant that had a back patio with a ceiling of vines with lanterns hanging from them. It was very romantic. (The food was also very good: tagliatelle with crab sauce...yum). We visited the Doge's palace, St. Marks Square and Basilica, and the Ponte di Rialto. All of these places were packed with tourists but as soon as you were away from these sights Venice was much less crowded and you could really take in the city.
The highlight of our time in Venice was the gondola ride. What is more romantic than a gondola ride? Our gondolier began the ride by pointing out some of the sights we passed and soon the gondolier in front of us began to sing. About halfway through the ride Steve proposed. (He did a very good job!) After the gondola ride we went for gelato (our favorite dessert!) and then walked back to the hotel. The perfect end to the perfect vacation!
There's not much left to tell of our Italian vacation. The next day we took a train back to Rome (on this trip we used every type of transportation imaginable: plane, car, bus, subway, boat, gondola, train) which was nice- we got to see lots of the countryside. We spent the night at a hotel close to the airport to make our early flight (turns out they would have held the plane if we'd been late- they held it for other people!) and headed back to reality (almost, we still got to fly home in first class). Our Italian vacation was amazing. Italy is more amazing and beautiful than I could have ever imagined. Oh, and while we were in Rome we both threw a coin backwards with our right hand over our left shoulder in Trevi Fountain, just to make sure that we go back one day!