Our last stop was Venice. We arrived Friday afternoon and went straight to the old part of the city (we stayed on the mainland).
We took a ferry from the mainland to the old city. The ferries were about like floating buses. Here is the ferry landing on the old part of the city where all of the vendors hawk their trinkets.
Above is St. Mark's Square. We went into the cathedral and it was quite impressive. The insides of the domes were covered with gold mosaics. After going through the cathedral we then went on a tour of a glass blowing shop.
Once we were done with the glass blowing portion of the tour, we moved on to the Gondola riding portion of the tour. One thing I noticed is that the water is much cleaner than I remembered it from the last time we were there around 69-70. I remember the water being a nasty green/brown with lots of junk floating in it. Nothing like that now. Even in this picture you can see it is clean.
Saturday I ended up sleeping pretty late so I didn't go back to old Venice as most of the other tour group did. I walked around town a bit and bumped into Derwood and Kathleen. We ended up going into the center of the town for mainland Venice. I'm really glad we did this as it gave me a much better picture as to how Italians really live plus it was such a nice day.
Saturday night was the last time we were together as a group. People started departing for different destinations after dinner. Sunday morning Diane and I caught a cab for the airport. I was able to get the cab, tell him where I wanted to go, and pay and tip him. In a week I had picked up a lot of Italian.