Venice: August 22, 2006. Last Day in Italy!

This morning we had a little time to say goodbye to Venice before we had to leave. We meandered down a few alleyways over to St. Mark's Square, called by Napoleon "The most beautiful living room in Europe." It was early and almost deserted.

Yesterday I bought a bag of pigeon food for Heidi to feed the birds. She thought it was silly, but I knew she would have a great time tossing corn to the pigeons. They actually put birdy birth control into the pigeon food, but you could never tell it because there are literally 10,000 pigeons in St. Mark's Square.

This is the place where our family story happened, about Dad telling everyone to "Run!" when the pigeons took off. I was pregnant and did not run, and so I got pooped on, right on my belly! Heidi was the baby, and here she is back in Venice again, feeding those pigeons!

We left right after breakfast. We hauled our bags out to the water shuttle for the 40 minute trip to the bus station, then rode the bus to Marco Polo airport. We needed to get there by 10 for our flight which left at noon. We changed planes in Amsterdam and went on to Minneapolis, where unfortunately we had a 3 hour wait. We arrived home in SLC at 11:00 at night, after traveling for 23 hours straight.

This has been such great fun! I have loved every single minute of it. I don't think I can ever really get Venice out of my system. I still find myself daydreaming about going back . . . I'll just have to keep returning. Allof you reading, come with me next time!