Nice, Venice and Florence.

 We stayed up all night and packed and headed to the airport around 3:00 A.M. on Friday morning.  We'd been through security for an hour when I saw some Moe people finish up security and coming to join us.  Austen, Tami, Krista, Boston, Josh, Randy, Barb, Tia and Ryan who were all on our flight with us ... and Kylie and Eric are somewhere around there too.

Boston was a great flier, sleeping from SLC to Chicago.

We had a long layover in Chicago, and this is one way that we passed the time.

We took Ubers to the train station in Nice and wandered around town for a while with Barb.

Here's Dad in front of a lovely church there.

 This a the shop where I bought my first oranges and apples in an attempt to keep my fiber count up.

A random picture on the street I liked.

The dome of a small apartment building.

 Back to the train station where we found some homies chilling.

Then we took the train to Venice, along the coast, including traveling through the beautiful hill side county of Monaco.

  

Kylie catches up on her sleep.

Here we are just off the train in Venice.  We took a water bus to the stop to walk up to our Airbnb.

Here we are on some of the many steps up to our accommodations, which appeared to be 200 years old at least ... of course  I loved it.  Interior shots later.

We're off the next morning ...

 This is a typical street view.

Jeff and Robin, who we met up with us in Venice, grab pastries for breakfast.

 Yum

 Here's part of our group crossing the Rialto bridge.

Here we are on the top of the bridge.

... and Jeff and Robin too.

Here's a side view of the same bridge.

 Just wondering how this door is used?  Isn't the water color pretty?

 This is St Marks

Even with the barriers its astonishing.

 I loved the pillars made from assorted marbles.

I loved the roof line with the domes and decor.

This is the detached bell tower in the square, everyone but Robin and I went up.

 Here are some pictures Scott took from the tower.

 Here are a couple of other pictures that Dad took.

 We took a boat tour of the three islands off Venice.  This is the shore of Murano, where they make beautiful glass works.  Our tour boat stopped at this dock, just outside a factory where we watched a glass blower.

I thought it was lovely.

Then back on the boat we headed to Burano which is famous for lace making.

 It was charming and there was a lot of lace, but there was not any native lace ... I saw all kinds, from everywhere, and one shop owner claimed it was all local, another shop employee pretended to be finishing up a piece of lace by doing a whip stitch along the edge ... how dumb do they think people are?

 The center of the main street had its own canal, not sure why but it was very pretty.

The third island was Torcello,  We stopped and had lunch, including this cool cracker bowl ... but we missed the antique store and a historic 1200 year old church, because all our time was spent at the eatery.

We did more site seeing the next day in Venice.

Here were are on the Bridge of Sighs.

 Trina's kids loved the people friendly pigeons.

 I loved the floors in St. Marks.

 This is our bed at the Airbnb.

and the door to our room.

This is the table, and Jeff,

 Here we are in the alley that leads to our Airbnb.

This is Trina in the house they stayed in, also an Airbnb.  They had their family of 7, plus Kelsey and Zach and their baby, Krista, Josh and their baby, and Tia and Ryan.

Ours had the Heuers, Moes, Perkins, and Tami, Randy's sister, Kylie, Eric and Austin.

 Here they all are out front as we prepare for our final day in Venice.

This is the entrance of a wonderful mask shop we checked out.

 This is the window of the shop showing a reflection of Tami taking a picture of the shop too.

 This is the other door of the amazing double shop.

 Then we headed to the Jewish Ghetto. It was established in 1516. It was walled in and had enforced curfews, with guards at the exits.  It was the first forced Jewish community in Europe, and the first place to be called a ghetto.

 Here we walk toward the ghetto central square, where there are four different synagogues, because the Jews here came from other places, and tried to keep the traditions of their home towns.

 This is the central square, but the synagogs, were not fancy, they hardly look like churches.

Here's a barred store display.  Less than 10 Jews still live in the ghetto, since the economy here is very expensive due to the tourist trade, they couldn't afford to stay.

This is the train that we took to Florence,

We rode with Jeff and Robin ... Robin was doing an as you go memory book for the trip.

This is what our guys did.

Here we are at a pizza place in Florence.  I had pumpkin pizza, which was actually very good.

 Such colorful yummies in the store windows.

 Here are Dad and I at the Duomo.    Its the central building in the snow dome of Venice that Lucy Eleanor Moderatz got from Jack Callihan in While You were Sleeping.  I also bought a miniature snow dome, just to remember the movie by.

 I loved the statuary on the building.

 Then we went to see a life size copy of the David that stands on the original spot where the original David stood, we didn't see the original because the museum that houses it was closed the one day we were in Florence.

This statue is a man, whose all painted white.  Trina's kids got a kick our of interacting with him.

Next we climbed up to see this view of Florence.  I didn't make the last couple of flights of stairs, but Dad did and took some pictures.

We found a nice outdoor restaurant that had amazing food ... counting our fiber we ordered the split pea soup, which was lovely.

So that was the first several days of our trip.  We took the train from Florence to Rome, where our group was split into three and stayed in three apartments one above the other.  But that my friends, is a story for another day.