Day Eight: Venice & Florence

I had a feeling that my pictures were gone from the day before, so Mom and I went for a walk in the morning. I was able to get quite a few pictures. We also found a really cute park not far from our place.

This woman posed her dog to take pictures. It was so cute.

As we were walking, we ran into Andy and he didn't recognize us at first. We had a good laugh after that.

This is the Basilica di San Marco.

After seeing all of the beautiful masks, I now really want to go to a masquerade ball.

The color of the water was amazing.

I love all of the colors of the buildings.

This is a monument of Giuseppe Garibaldi. He's known as the George Washington of Italy.

See! I was really there!

This is the Venice Arsenal and was a shipyard founded in 1104 by the Eastern Roman Empire.

This is the entrance to the Arsenal.

After our walk, we got all of our luggage and took a boat taxi to meet up with Chris and Annie at the train station.

The detail in this mosaic covered building was amazing!

Our next stop was Florence. The train ride was very relaxing and we were able to catch up with Chris and Annie's quick trip to Switzerland.

Our walk to our Airbnb took us past the Duomo and about 100 different gelato stands.

The view from the family room of our place.

We dropped off our things and did a bit of exploring on our way to dinner.

We crossed the Arno River and had a good dinner.

The lemon gelato was delicious!

As we were wandering, we found a signed University of Kentucky football. For those who don't know, my dad served his mission in Kentucky and still talks about it like he just got home. We were very excited and sent him a picture of it.

After we got back, Chris pulled up the Golden State Warriors playoff game. Just because we were in Europe doesn't mean we had to miss an NBA game.

We had another long, but fantastic day. That was day eight.

Day Seven: Venice

Unfortunately, my SD card wasn't working and I lost all my pictures on the camera from this day. It's really unfortunate because I took some really amazing ones. I told Jonathan that he now gets to take me back to Venice so I can retake them. Luckily, I still took a few pictures with my phone.

In the morning, Chris and Annie left for a quick visit to Switzerland to see Annie's host family she stayed with when she was a teenager. Andy and Amy went exploring on their own around the city. Mom and I had a slower start to our day. I had the best room in our Airbnb. It was on the top floor and had it's own bathroom and terrace. It was amazing!

Finally we ventured out and had pizza for lunch.

We then strolled along the Grand Canal and Mom got a few paintings done by local artists. It was a glorious day!

We found a place to sit down and eat our gelato with a beautiful view.

This is their garbage boat. They pick up garbage everyday.

We ended up back on the terrace and read our books. 

We met up with Amy and Andy for dinner. We found a local restaurant and I had the best pesto pasta. After dinner we got a little bit lost and we kept going past a small shop that had karaoke. We eventually did find our way back to our Airbnb.

Our slow paced day was exactly what we needed. And that was day seven.

Surprise Weekend Getaway

The day before Mother's Day, I was finally facing the wide variety of my thoughts and feelings. It was a mistake. (I wrote them out here.) I should have been going through them little by little throughout the week instead. That got me into a really low mood. So, Jonathan took action. He told me that he was going to take me away for the weekend and I got to decide where we were going. While he found a sub for our Primary class, I started looking at beaches here in Texas. Texas is not known for it's beaches, but it is one of my favorite places thanks to my mom sharing here love of the beach with me.

We were packed and ready to go within a couple of hours. We were already planning on going to the San Antonio Temple that day, so we spent a few hours there and then got some more supplies at Walmart. After that, we made our way down to Victoria, Texas where our hotel was. It was already dark so we couldn't see much except orange colored light in the distance. It kind of looked like a city was in the distance, but the light looked a bit different. A little while later, the lights were spread out and it was clearly not a city. It turned out we were driving through an oil field. Eventually, we did make it to our hotel.

The next morning, we had the typical hotel breakfast of Texas-shaped waffles. We were still a couple of hours away from the beach I wanted to go to, but it turned out really well. We were able to see a side of Texas we never expected. We drove past wetlands and acres of corn fields. It was a beautiful drive. We drove through Corpus Christi and made our way down to Mustang Island Beach. Jonathan is not a fan of the beach and was still willing to go because he knows how much I love it.

Mustang Island Beach converted him. He loved the softness of the sand and the warm water. We floated around and played in the waves for a few hours.

It was a fantastic day! I couldn't believe how much Jonathan was enjoying himself.

It was a fantastic beach and it wasn't too busy. There were plenty of people around, but it wasn't crowded. It was interesting seeing the oil rigs in the distance, but it didn't detract from the beautiful beach and water.

The sand was very fine and I used it as an exfoliator to make my skin extra soft.

This was exactly the kind of day that I needed and now Jonathan wants to live closer to a beach so we can go more regularly. I never thought he would say something like that!