We're back!

After some minor stresses in our return itinerary we arrived home only 3 hours later than expected yesterday. We were pretty tired though as we'd been up for nearly 23 hours. Crazy winter weather in Europe caused our connecting flight into Munich to be canceled. This was the stressful part. The nice part was being rebooked by Lufthansa on Air France with a connection in Paris instead and having the Paris to DC leg be in swanky first class with reclining seats, 5-course meal and the whole nine yards. I am forever ruined for air travel.

We slept like rocks last night and I certainly didn't want to get up for work this morning but here I am. Tonight is catch up night on cleaning and laundry. The trip was fantastic though. I did pull the photos off the camera but haven't looked through them. Between the bright sun on some days and rain on others I'm not sure I got anything really spectacular but I know we'll have a good record of our adventure regardless. Venice is such a crazy, frustrating, wonderful and magic city and so different from any other I've ever visited. We enjoyed much Prosecco and other wine as well as some really delicious meals. I even ordered my gnocchi one evening with cuttlefish in ink sauce. That stuff came out super black and the waiter even questioned if that was what I really wanted. I really enjoyed it though, and ate it carefully, so as not to turn my front teeth dark. We met a couple from Great Britain who were on their first trip to Venice one evening and ended up chatting them up until the bar closed. She was from Liverpool and he was from Manchester and we had a wonderful time discussing the differences in cultures. I hope that they found safe return to Bristol yesterday.

There's something about travel. It's frustrating at times but also wonderful and exciting and so worth the stress. Putting yourself into situations that culturally maybe you aren't completely used to can be so rewarding (although I still don't see how Italians can really eat 4 course meals regularly). We didn't find the language barrier to be too much of a hinderance here however we do plan on trying to pick up some Spanish before our next trip.

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving. Welcome to the rest of the holiday season. I'll post some photos in the next day or two once we've caught up a little bit.