Sunday, May 20 - The road to Venice!

We knew that we would be on the bus for a long time today - 7+ hours over the course of the day.  So, we got out for a walk before breakfast this morning.  It had rained some the day before but was pretty dry when we went out.  Just down the road, not very far, we found where a river came up close to the road.  We walked across a small bridge and down a path through the woods.  As with almost everyplace we've been, we had wonderful scenery to enjoy.  Our photo (below) was taken by a fellow tour member on the sidewalk across the street from the hotel (where we saw the cows yesterday).

The image below is of a part of the river view we had through the trees from the path in the woods.  The color of the water (a sort of green) is due to the amount of finely crushed rock suspended in the water.  There are places where the water is very clear, but much of what we have seen is this hazy green color.  It's called glacier water by some.

Almost all of our photos for the day (until we reached Venice) were taken through the windows of the bus on our way through the Alps.  They are beautiful mountains with many pastoral scenes.  Much of what we saw, though photo-worthy, we don't know the details about, such as the buildings below.

There are very strict regulations that commercial drivers must observe in Europe, and one is that they have to have breaks every couple of hours.  That works well in our case as it's nice to get out of the bus every couple of hours to stretch our legs and visit the WC  At one stop, we were able to view the highest point in Germany, the Zugspitze (which is I think the left peak in the photo below).  It is almost 3000 meters above sea level.  The peak on the right looks higher only because it is closer to our viewing spot than the Zugspitze.

Just before hopping back onto the bus, I snapped this photo of a Yamaha motorcycle on top of a pole.  I didn't see any explanation as to why it was there, but thought it was a neat thing.  It had at one time been painted all over with what looked to me to be a military green paint.  Sorry I don't have any further information about it!

Our first stop in northern Italy was for lunch at a wonderful little café.  Here is a view of part of our group.  Our lunch was salad three different sandwiches (all very good, except Janice did not eat her tuna sandwich), and then gelato.  Yum, yum!!

We knew before we left Austria that we would have a long walk to our hotel in Venice.  So, we left most of our stuff in storage under the bus, we took only what we would need for our two days in Venice in our backpacks.  It was a good thing.  There were lots of people and tight spaces at times.   But we finally made it to our hotel.  We are on the third floor, which is really the third floor above the main floor.  The image below is the view out our window.

Jesse gave us a quick orientation walk from our hotel to the Piazza San Marko, which is the mail space on this end of Venice.  The image below shows us in front of the Basilica di San Marko.  There are many large mosaics here which show various Old Testament scenes.

I'll bet you didn't know Moses was actually Saint Moses.  Well, I guess he really wasn't, though the name of this particular church is The Chiesa di San Moisè.  According to Jesse, the Venetians had often been in trouble with the church in Rome for inaccuracies in their doctrine.  It seems they just wanted to have something for everyone, and a church to Saint Moses was one way of doing that!

Before our dinner last night, we took a gondola ride around the canals in Venice.  The 28 of us were in five gondolas.  The boat with only four people in it (six in all the others) was reserved for the couple who had been married the least amount of time (Nichole and Marvin, less than a year) and the couple married the longest (Connie and Phil, almost 50 years).  With them in their gondola was an opera singer and a man playing an accordion.  We were in the gondola behind them and were treated to wonderful singing and playing by the musicians in the boat ahead of us!

Below is another view from our gondola.

I just don't remember the name of this church which was across the Grand Canal from the Piazza San Marko.  But it is an imposing site sitting there on the water.  We finished our day with another great meal.  We didn't leave for our meal until after 7PM and didn't get back to the hotel until about 10PM.  Seems that late evening meals are the norm in Europe.