"Are these underwear yours?" DIS Viking Italian Sojourn 2018 TR *COMPLETE* 10/14 New TR Link!

Sounds you had a good day wandering Venice after you found the luggage spot. We leave in 10 days for our river cruise and after the cruise staying 4 nights on our own in Switzerland. I'm forcing myself to pack as light as possible since at that point we'll be lugging our own suitcases to the train, from the train to the hotel etc. It was a little painful reading about you getting checked into your apt.! Such poor execution on the owner's part! I'm glad that you did enjoy the apt after all - it did have a great view. Really love the Venice pictures!
 
Sounds you had a good day wandering Venice after you found the luggage spot. We leave in 10 days for our river cruise and after the cruise staying 4 nights on our own in Switzerland. I'm forcing myself to pack as light as possible since at that point we'll be lugging our own suitcases to the train, from the train to the hotel etc. It was a little painful reading about you getting checked into your apt.! Such poor execution on the owner's part! I'm glad that you did enjoy the apt after all - it did have a great view. Really love the Venice pictures!

It does suck having to haul your luggage all around! We would have been in trouble had we had more stuff than we did. lol We definitely tried to pack light for the same reason! Luckily we were able to do laundry several times on the ship so it made it a lot easier to pack lighter.

The check in process was a total disaster! Thankfully the apartment was nice and made up for it.
 
Day 10 Continued: Saturday March 31st

We unpacked so that we could reorganize everything for the trip home in a couple of days. Then we decided to give it another chance going back out, so we went to a bookstore DH had found called Libraria Aqua Alta, which was supposed to be pretty cool.


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It was AMAZING in there!! It was crammed with books floor to ceiling, and there were even gondolas in the centers of the rooms filled with books. It made for a tight experience trying to walk through there, but really incredible to see.


We both found their take on a Fire Exit to be pretty amusing.


They had a back patio with staircases made of books that were waterlogged and weather-beaten, but the painting on the walls indicated there was a wonderful view from the top so we decided to check it out.


And it was indeed wonderful!



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Some Disney pals
We found a couple of things to buy. There was actually a book in English (most of the books were in Italian) of children’s stories of Venetian tales, so we got that for the kids, and a smaller book for ourselves that just had illustrations of bridges and other Venice landmarks. And we also got a little gondola kit so DS could build one, and a deck of cards for DH’s dad. There was even a cat that lived in the bookstore named Ziggy! We visited with him while waiting to pay for our stuff.


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While we were inside it started thundering again and looking ominous, so we headed back to the apartment.


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It started raining when we were almost there, and we got inside just as it unleashed a second monsoon! When we got upstairs, we realized it was actually hailing!!


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Now if you read my ABD Viva Italia TR from 2014, you might remember we got a bit of hail in Florence that ended up following us to Venice.


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So I made sure to post that photo from our balcony of the hail and tag everyone we had done the Viva Italia trip with in 2014 to figure out why it always hailed when we were in Venice together?!

Once the hail stopped, we started looking around online to find somewhere to eat for dinner. I didn’t want to stray too far because I was worried about getting caught in the rain again, but I also didn’t want to head out without really having an idea of where to go either.



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Another view from the balcony.

I was really in the mood for some ravioli for reasons I’m still not sure of. All I knew was I didn’t want pizza, I wanted pasta, and that night in particular I wanted that pasta to be ravioli. We ended up finding a restaurant in the little square where the apartment was that had some on the menu, and it didn’t look crazy expensive, so it worked out perfectly.


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DH got spaghetti with basil, peppers, and olive oil. Sounded simple, but was actually very good.


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And I had ravioli with bolognase.


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We wanted one glimpse of St. Mark’s without huge crowds and at night, so we popped over for a look around.


After a quick 5 minute walk, we were back at the apartment to shower and get to bed. It had been a long and exhausting day! And I had climbed those 5 flights of stairs now 6 times! I guess it was good this was at the end of the trip to help burn off all that pasta and gelato…

UP NEXT: Easter Sunday in Venice
 
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Glad your day got better after a rough start. The book store looks so unique - nice you found a few things to buy. Nice keepsakes. Wow - Easter Sunday in Venice. That sounds amazing - anxious to hear about it!
 


What a cool bookstore! The view from the back patio was so nice!

Glad you found a good spot for dinner!

Love the nighttime pics!
 
Catching up on your report. I was away finally on a trip to WDW after a 4 year absence. Way too long!

Those coloured houses are nice. The city I live in has similar houses painted in bright colours near the harbour. They call it "Jellybean Row". I guess it's a thing with coastal cities and fog.

Venice looks wonderful...despite the apartment drama!
 
Glad your day got better after a rough start. The book store looks so unique - nice you found a few things to buy. Nice keepsakes. Wow - Easter Sunday in Venice. That sounds amazing - anxious to hear about it!

The book store was a great find! It was worth a walk over there to check it out, even though 99% of the books were in Italian. lol

What a cool bookstore! The view from the back patio was so nice!

Glad you found a good spot for dinner!

Love the nighttime pics!

The bookstore was super cool. I would love having a local bookstore like that one! But almost all of the books were in Italian, so it wasn't really practical to buy much. lol The view from the back was cool and I loved that they made the steps out of books.

Catching up on your report. I was away finally on a trip to WDW after a 4 year absence. Way too long!

Those coloured houses are nice. The city I live in has similar houses painted in bright colours near the harbour. They call it "Jellybean Row". I guess it's a thing with coastal cities and fog.

Venice looks wonderful...despite the apartment drama!

I hope you had a great trip to WDW! I feel your pain. By the time we get back (probably in early 2020) it will have been 3.5 years since our last visit. I shouldn't complain too much because we have taken some amazing trips in between, but I definitely miss WDW!!

Totally makes perfect sense for coastal cities. I never really thought about it until the guide told us!

Apartment drama aside, Venice was AMAZING!
 


Those steps made out of old books is awesome! That's so cool. And a gondola filled with books...I'm writing this store down for future reference.

Glad you were able to get that ravioli you wanted!
 
Those steps made out of old books is awesome! That's so cool. And a gondola filled with books...I'm writing this store down for future reference.

Glad you were able to get that ravioli you wanted!

It was very cool looking, but as a total book lover it did give me little palpitations to see books out there left to the elements like that! It's definitely worth checking out when in Venice, especially if you have plenty of time to explore like we did this time around.

You know when you just want something in particular and can't get your mind off it?! It worked out perfect that we found that place steps away from our apartment because I had ravioli on the brain and didn't want to settle for anything else!! lol
 
Day 11: Sunday April 1st

Our last day in Venice was Easter Sunday, and DH was up before the sun to go take some sunrise photos. I decided to sleep in a little because let’s face it, it had been a long week and I was exhausted!


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The little square where our apartment was, so quiet without anything open or anyone around


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St. Mark’s looks so peaceful at sunrise! It’s so rare to see it with no one there, so I’m sure DH enjoyed getting that experience even though it meant getting up very early.


When DH got back to the apartment, we started getting ready for Easter mass. We were planning on the big 10:30 am service, and knew we’d need to get there pretty early to get a spot in line. So as soon as we were ready, we walked down to St. Mark’s Square. When we arrived, we were surprised to find they were already letting people in and the security guards at the doors were letting people know mass had started. I was so confused! But we went inside and eventually we figured out there was a 9 am mass going on. So we quietly stayed to the back of that one, and once it was over, we were easily able to get a seat to wait for the next mass. There were padded chairs closer to the front and we were happy to get a couple of those because the other choice was some uncomfortable looking solid wood chairs in the back.

DH snuck a few phone photos while waiting for mass to start.


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The mass was absolutely beautiful! They gave out copies of the homily printed in several languages, and also booklets with the parts of the mass printed in several languages to help follow along. A majority of the mass was said in Italian, but there was one reading and one prayers of the faithful done in English. There was also a lot of Latin, and possibly some other languages I didn’t recognize at the time. It was definitely an experience of a lifetime! In total, it lasted about an hour and a half.

Once the mass was ended, we followed the hordes out of the basilica.


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By the time we got back to the apartment and changed into more casual clothes, we were ready to get something to eat!

We decided to stick close to the apartment and have lunch at a casual restaurant called Conca d’Oro.


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After looking over the menu, we decided to share an order of arancini and also a pizza for our entrée.


It was good and really hit the spot! We had decided to share because we wanted to make the most of our last day and hit up Grom for some gelato after lunch!

UP NEXT: Chocolate!
 
Those morning pictures are stunning!!

Glad you were able to get into the mass, sounds like a great experience getting to be there on Easter Sunday!
 
What an amazing experience! That's a once in a lifetime opportunity right there...to attend Easter mass in the basilica!
 
Those morning pictures are stunning!!

Glad you were able to get into the mass, sounds like a great experience getting to be there on Easter Sunday!

What an amazing experience! That's a once in a lifetime opportunity right there...to attend Easter mass in the basilica!

I was a bit hesitant to be away from the kids for Easter, but it was worth it for the experience of being inside St. Mark's for Easter Sunday Mass. The kids wrote a letter to the Easter Bunny and asked him to pass by early since we would be away and they would be with their grandparents, and luckily he was nice enough to do so. ;)
 
The mass was absolutely beautiful! They gave out copies of the homily printed in several languages, and also booklets with the parts of the mass printed in several languages to help follow along. A majority of the mass was said in Italian, but there was one reading and one prayers of the faithful done in English. There was also a lot of Latin, and possibly some other languages I didn’t recognize at the time. It was definitely an experience of a lifetime! In total, it lasted about an hour and a half.
That must have been an incredible setting for Easter mass! Nice that they had some different languages as well.

It's strange to see those pictures with no people around. Definitely worth an early rise!
 
That must have been an incredible setting for Easter mass! Nice that they had some different languages as well.

It's strange to see those pictures with no people around. Definitely worth an early rise!

It was breathtaking! Definitely an experience I will NEVER forget. I imagine mass there anytime is pretty special, but the big production of Easter mass was a real treat.

I wish I would have had the energy to get up and see it with him, but I'll have to enjoy it through the photos along with my readers. lol
 
I totally meant to get this TR wrapped up before going on our Universal Orlando vacation this past week, but life got very busy in the days leading up to our departure! But while our post vacation laundry is going and we are watching some football, I figured it was time to finish this TR...It will take a few updates and then I'll still need to snap pictures of the souvenirs we brought home to do a final wrap up post, but here's the end of our Viking adventure.

Day 11 Continued: Sunday April 1st

When I left off, we'd just had a really delicious lunch near the apartment after attending a beautiful Easter Mass at St. Mark's Basilica, and we were in the mood for some gelato!

I went for my favorite combo of chocolate and salted caramel. DH got dark chocolate and stracciatella.

DH had read about a chocolate store he wanted to visit called Nino & Friends, and we had passed it on the way to Grom, so we headed back that way after finishing our gelato.


The little shop was really packed and super loud, but they were giving out tons of free samples so we went in and tried a bunch! Every few minutes the people working there would open a cabinet to put in one tray of goodies and take out a different one for people to sample. We debated getting some there but figured if we were going to bring chocolate back home, we’d rather get something from Venchi.


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We decided to visit the two famous bridges in Venice on our last day, the Rialto for a second time, and the Accademia which we hadn’t made our way over to thus far. First up, we headed to the Rialto.


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The stunningly gorgeous Grand Canal!


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We had to be careful crossing over the bridge, because right in the middle of the super crowded staircase going up someone had left a “protein spill.” :scared:


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The Accademia Bridge was one we had visited on our ABD when doing late night photos with Pete, Dustin, and some other DISers, so we had never seen it during the day. Although it’s “just” a bridge, we thought that would be something else worth walking over to see and check out the view during the daytime. So we started in that direction once we were done admiring the Rialto.


We went inside this church and they were doing some kind of music display inside, which was interesting to see inside of a beautiful cathedral.


The Accademia bridge was just beyond this church, and we stopped short when we saw…


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…big ugly construction walls!!!

So that was certainly a disappointment. With the walls, the bridge was extremely narrow so you could only walk single file in each direction. We tried going across to see if we could at least spot a pretty view, but no go.

After that bummer, we decided to head back towards St. Mark’s. We did pass an art gallery that had a huge red gorilla outside, so that was our pic to send DS for the day. We checked out the art outside, but didn’t venture inside.


But we did spot a little pal named Mickey Mouse inside through the window.


Continued in next post...
 
Day 11 Continued: Sunday April 1st


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Venice traffic jam


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We passed by the alleyway near the Luna Baglioni where we stayed for our ABD, and spotted a big group of friends sitting outside so we stopped by to chat with everyone and see what they had been up to since the cruise had ended. It was fun to compare notes and give them all a proper goodbye since we had really not seen anyone after leaving the ship. We had spotted Craig and Kylie at mass that morning, so we compared experiences there. Then we had to get back to the apartment to pack. :sad:


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As we were walking across the square, we passed one of the cafes with a live band playing outside, and as we got closer, we both looked at each other and said, “Are they playing the scores from Harry Potter?!”

THEY WERE!!!



That was extraordinarily cool to stumble upon!! After seeing them finish up their Harry Potter medley, we got back to the apartment and packed a bulk of our stuff up. We spent some time sitting out on the balcony with DH’s laptop and found ourselves cruising around the Universal Orlando website pricing out dates now that we had DS’s school calendar and knew of a couple dates he had off for teacher in-services in September. We actually ended up booking our return-one-last-time-before-these-APs-expire trip to Hard Rock Hotel up on that balcony (we actually just returned from that trip yesterday!).

After the fun that is packing, we decided to head down to the nearby vaparetto stop where our ride would be picking us up in the morning so that we knew exactly where we were going. It wasn’t difficult to find at all, and only took about 5 minutes to get there from the apartment.


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Random pizza dough faces in a window we must have seen on the way lol

While we were down there by the vaparetto stop, we actually saw the Viking Sky departing for its next port!


It was kind of weird seeing it sail away without us!


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We wanted to get another pass through St. Mark’s so we went over and spotted this dog that was freaking huge, but this photo doesn’t even really do it justice.


It was seriously so nice to be just a few steps away from the most famous spot in Venice.

We didn’t feel like venturing out too far for dinner, so we actually ended up at the same restaurant where we had eaten lunch. No shame! We knew where it was located, and we knew we liked the food, so it was an easy choice.


This time we shared a diavolo pizza and some garlic parmesan fries.


Of course, we had to finish off our last night in Venice with some gelato!


We couldn’t help it, we just needed ONE more look at St. Mark’s, so we ate our gelato as we walked over there to get one last glimpse. But we couldn’t stay long because our ride to the airport was showing up at 4 am, so we needed to get to bed.

Since our check in experience at the apartment had been so harrowing, we had never gotten photos of it, so DH took these when we got back. Just pretend our junk is not everywhere.


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Living room


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Living room looking back towards the front door


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Hallway with the bathroom off of it and heading towards the kitchen


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It was certainly nothing fancy, but it suited our needs just fine and we had picked it mainly for that view of the bell tower from the balcony.

We had to get to bed incredibly early that night, so we took showers and went to bed around 8:30 or so. Our alarms were set insanely early!

Continued in next post...
 
Day 12: Monday April 2nd

Our travel home day started WAY TOO EARLY!!

We were up at 3:20 am to get dressed, throw our last minute things in our luggage, and leave the apartment at 3:35 am. We had booked a shared ride to the airport that we were supposed to meet at 4 am at the San Zaccaria vaparetto stop where we had been dropped off from the ship just a few days before. It was a short walk, and much easier getting through the streets with our luggage without having to dodge all the people walking around. We actually made it to the dock a few minutes early and our boat was already there, so we were ready to get moving a little earlier than scheduled.

The boat made 2 more stops and picked up 6 more people, then we had a 30 minute ride to the Marco Polo airport.



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Arrividerci, Venezia! We will miss you terribly!


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We got to the airport and unlike when ABD dropped us off, we had to walk up the ramp with our stuff instead of getting pampered with that nice van to drive us.


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We got our boarding passes and ran into a few DISers at security so we chatted with them before saying farewell and heading to our gate. I grabbed a muffin and a bottle of water for breakfast while we waited for our flight to board. Luckily, our flight took off for Paris a little early and landed a little early, or we really might not have made our connection. Charles de Gaulle was a nightmare!!

First, we had to exit the plane outside and take a bus over to the terminal. Then we found out we had to switch terminals, and had to go through passport control first, which was packed.


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I was freaking out as I watch the time tick away while we shuffled through those switchbacks. Once through, we hurried over to an elevator that took us down a couple of floors where… we had to get on another bus!! It was really frustrating not knowing how many more steps it was going to take to get to our gate, and every time we thought we had overcome all the obstacles, there was yet another one in our way. By the time we had waited for and gotten on this second bus, our flight was already boarding.

After a lovely sprint up a flight of stairs and down to our gate, we were one of the last handful of passengers to load onto our flight, but at least we made it! DH of course is never panicked by this because he’s like, “There’s always more flights.” But once I’m in the mindset of going home, I’m ready to GET HOME.

After all of that…the plane left 40 minutes later than scheduled.

Lunch was served on the flight which was ravioli. It was decent for airline food, but when you just left Italy…


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On the way home, I napped a little and got to watch The Greatest Showman which I LOVED! I wanted to watch it again right away, but I ended up watching Pitch Perfect 3 (okay but not as funny as the first one), The Mountain Between Us (good, but a little slow), and the beginning of Furious 7.

Once we made it to Detroit, we had no issues getting through border control, picking up and dropping off our checked luggage, and going through security. We actually were able to take our time finding our gate, and our last flight was delayed a little, bit but soon we were on our last leg of the journey home. We landed around 5:20 pm in New Orleans where my mom and DD picked us up. I was so happy to see my sweet little girl again! Once we got to their house and were reunited with DS, the true exhaustion settled in. When we went to bed that night, it had (time wise) been a full 24 hours since we had walked out onto the dock in Venice! We spent the night at my parents house before driving home with our kiddos in the morning.

And just like that, our amazing Italian DIS Adventure had come to an end! Like I mentioned, I'm still going to do a quick wrap up and post a few pictures of our souvenirs, but that's a wrap on trip updates.
 
DH had read about a chocolate store he wanted to visit called Nino & Friends, and we had passed it on the way to Grom, so we headed back that way after finishing our gelato.

Oh wow, look at all that chocolate dripping down. I wonder if it would be inappropriate to stick your head under? :p

The little shop was really packed and super loud, but they were giving out tons of free samples so we went in and tried a bunch!
Why not, it's free chocolate! It would take a lot for me to turn down chocolate in any situation.

That was extraordinarily cool to stumble upon!! After seeing them finish up their Harry Potter medley, we got back to the apartment and packed a bulk of our stuff up. We spent some time sitting out on the balcony with DH’s laptop and found ourselves cruising around the Universal Orlando website pricing out dates
That music must have put you right in the mood to book a trip to Universal!

On the way home, I napped a little and got to watch The Greatest Showman which I LOVED!
My whole family loved it too. I don't buy a lot on bluray these days, but I bought that one. I have no problem watching it multiple times.
 
Sounds like a great last day! Beautiful pics! And of course since it was your last day you needed 2 gelato stops!!

Your experience at the Paris airport sounds horrible! I'm like you, if vacation is over then I just want to get HOME!
 

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