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| On the way back we stopped for lunch. I had brought extra rolls, ham, and cheese from breakfast for my lunch, but the kids stopped in a restaurant. There was a cover charge (we checked the menu) so I sat on a stair in the shade nearby to have my lunch. The waiter wondered where I went and mentioned that the cover charge only applied to large groups. Go figure! After lunch we crossed the Ponte de Rialto (the large bridge across the Grand Canal) which is shown above. There were shops on each side and even vendor carts. Wow! There were stairs on the outside, too, with a nice view of the canal. In the morning I had left my camera on by mistake and couldn't take any more pictures, so I borrowed Nikki's camera as she was all pictured out by then (we had taken lots of pictures). Rechargable batteries are cool unless you don't have spares with you. Below are more scenes from Venice on our walk back to the bus. |
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| Here and above are the last of the pictures from Venice. Across from the hotel there was a really nice restaurant where we had dinner and next to that was a super market, IN'S Mercado. I thought I took a picture of it and the restaurant, but my disk was full (it seems) and then I forgot. Doh! Anyway, the super market had really great prices and we bought lots of presents to take home, chocolate and packaged cakes. Below is the view from my room where they parked buses behind the hotel. The next morning we rested and then a mini-van picked up eight of from the tour and took us to the airport just before noon. We got a flight from the Marco Polo airport (below) to Stockholm. |
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| We flew to Stockholm on a Star Alliance flight, one of the partners of SAS, shown above. We then waited in Stockholm a while and took the flight back to Newark, NJ. The short flight was a little cramped, but for the long flight they treated us quite well. Each seat had an individual TV screen where you could choose your view from beneath the aircraft, one of many movies, or even playing simple Nintendo games with your controller. Cool. Then we were back in the U.S. about 10PM. I picked up a rental car and then drove Nikki back to Saratoga, NY, Jay to Albany, NY and then back to Newark, NJ to drop off the rental car and catch my flight home. I had only napped on the flight and then pretty much drove all night. As I was driving I was wishing I didn't need to do it (I really would have liked to stopped and rested), but there really weren't any good options so I just kept on plugging and actually managed to stay in good humor throughout. Amazing. In Newark I again took their monorail to catch my flight back to Oregon (below). When I got back it was still morning (after about 12 hours of time zone changes) and I tried to take the Max (Portland's light rail) back to work, but the power was out for that stretch of line and I needed to take a bus to the Max (added 40 minutes to my trip). I got to work and dropped off some of the presents and sorted through a few things before heading home on the C-Tran commuter bus. Zowee. That was over 40 hours of being in transit. I did nap a little on the flights but I was really toast when I got home.... |
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This page was last updated on November 1, 2007.
