Sad to Leave Venice But Excited for Krakow

St. Mark's Basilica in Venice.

The Roman Forum - I couldn't help but think at I viewed this site that Empires will pass but the Kingdom of Christ will never diminish! As a Christian, I see it this way: Roman Empire? 500 years. Christianity? 2000 and counting!

Venice has been a wonderful break from the business of London and the craziness of Rome. Staying at the north end of the Carnarreggio district of Venice was a brilliant move. Its amazing how once you've walked 5-10 minutes away from Rialto and San Marco how quiet and local Venice becomes. Our hotel was wonderful! And relatively cheap for Venice. They also had this wonderful, old Hotel cat whom we befriended named Pontevecchio (Vecchio Bridge). He was 17 and sunned himself every morning in the grass of the breakfast garden. Felt a little like home that way - with the cat I mean. We don't have a breakfast garden. Mores the pity!

Yesterday morning I awoke very early and, leaving Jenn asleep, walked to Rialto and San Marco square. There were only about 15 people in the square and all the way to the water front. About 10 were street sweepers and cleaners while the other five of us were armed with cameras. It was beautiful! No one around with the sun rising on San Giorggio Maggiore across the water. Oh yeah, there were the pigeons. Always the blasted pigeons. Oh well, what do you do? Did you know that the city of Venice has a pigeon culling program run by a few men? Seriously, they do it early in the morning when no one is around. If they didn't, the city would be overrun with pigeons and covered in pigeon dung.

Today we managed to send some postcard early and then make our way to the vapporeto 5 minutes away. This took us to the bus station where we caught a bus to the small Treviso airport where we are bloggin right now. The busses only leave every couple of hours to go to Treviso and we are not leaving for about four hours, if the Sky Europe flight is on time. Budget flights are cheap but not always predictable. Either way, we hope to be in Krakow by 5.10 pm today. We get to fly over the Alps, the Czech Republic and finally land in Krakow.

Arrivederci, Venice! Until next time.