Happy in Venice

We were up with the sun today, and were a little bummed to be leaving
the gorgeous Cinque Terre. We knew we had a daunting day of train
rides and connections to accomplish before we would see Venice. The
train rides were stressful. We got conflicting info from several
different Trenitalia employees and we were frustrated and stressed
several times. Then our train was delayed, while we were on it, and it
was pretty exhausting to keep our hungry, tired, hot, and bored kids
happy...especially when we were feeling all those things too. When we
finally arrived in Venice we were relieved, but still had a huge part
of our journey to get through- getting 3 kids, 3 suitcases, 2
backpacks, 2 carseats, and a stroller to our Venetian apartment. We
ended up paying to ride the 'waterbus'. It was a gorgeous ride, and a
fun way to be introduced to Venice, but we were so fried we just
wanted it to be over. Finally we found St. Barnabas Square, where the
apartment is located. We met Antonio, the owner, and as he gave us the
tour, all our stress and frustration of the day began to melt away.
The apartment may be our best yet. It is well equipped, we control our
own heat (not a given in Italy), great washer, big hot water
tank...AND WIFI!!!!!!!! I was beginning to think it was illegal in
this country or something! Just kidding , but there is really NO
wireless Internet anywhere. So we were pretty excited about that.
Now we can put a few pics on the blog each day, plus check our email,
etc.
After Antonio left, we turned on the tv to see if we could see what's
going on on the world (what's going on with the presidential race???),
and we came across CHARLIE and LOLA! In ENGLISH! If you don't know,
it just happens to be one of the kids' fav cartoons. And while we
aren't trekking around Europe so our kids can watch tv, let me just
tell you that it was near heaven to have 20 minutes of no fighting, no
wrestling and subsequent crying because of wrestling injuries, and no
whining/begging. Especially after the day we had!
The boys fell asleep so M and J had some father/daughter time and
hunted down a grocery store. They came home with quite the assortment
of... Tortellini (shocking!), and also chicken, and Joel made us a
lovely dinner. Afterwards, we went on a gelato hunt, and happened
upon the square where I stayed when I was here with my dad 10 years
ago. Pretty cool. Oh, and as you can see on the picture, Carter has
on his new 'backpack' *coughharnesscough* that we purchased just for
this leg of the trip. And before you think that you'd never put a
harness on your kid, just know that up until now we never have, but if
my choices are a harness, or fishing my little monkey out of a
Venetian cannal... He us a quick stubborn little guy, and this trip
isn't the time to take any chances! Anyway, it is pretty cute on him!

Finally, just wanted to add that the Carter pics tonight are because a
certain Nana wanted to make sure he was still on the trip with us!