Europe - Venice - Day 2

Friday July 28, 2006
Our current location is Frankfurt, Germany.
Our destination is Venice, Italy.
The tank is full with petrol.
The iPod is working.

Our trip finally began with an eager need to get to Venice as quickly as possible. This is the autbahn, so we kept on the pedal doing 160km to 220km. I love these roads out here. They were designed for high speed traveling. There isn't a better feeling than flying on the road for your first time on the autobahn and everyone is getting out of your way. Just like the States. ;)

We split the driving up by segments of 2-3 hours. The wonderful thing about it all was being navigated by the woman in our life right now. She's the best. As Jeanne would say, "I heart Navi." Miguel bought the unit in Germany, but her English accent gets us every time. She will calmly guide us through the dark night with comforting whispers of "Continue for 26 miles on the A4." or "Please make a sharp right in 600 yards." haha. She's great.

With our tour guide at hand and people dropping off the autobahn due to the late hour, we quickly hit the boarder of Italy and Austria. We were about to drive through the hilly wonderland of Austria. I swear to anything holy that I was going to see little red riding hood or another fairy tale character. Austria is strewn with gorgeous hills and mountains of tall pines and beautiful wood cabins. There is very little within eyesight that screams modern. If I was a writer, I would be able to put a picture in to a thousand words. However, you have to deal with my fairy tale description.

We stopped in Innsbruck to stretch our legs and take pictures of the town. The only other people around were three older Austrians chatting it up near their old school mini and having coffee. They were straight out of the 60/70's. It completed the picture perfect setting in Innsbruck.

Now it was time to come down into the hills of Italy, which were adorned with Summer yellow villas and vineyards older than America. We didn't have much to say, since we were too busy staring out the windows in awe of how spectacular Northern Italy is. However, we pushed on to Venice with a new level of excitement. We were finally in Italy and only an hour away from the waters of Venice!

We decided to head straight for Venice and deal with the hotel later. We parked in a structure right across the street. From the top, we were able to see all of Venice and it was awesome. It is too surreal to be looking down on Venice and watching the water taxis and gondolas going by. This ain't Disneyworld, peoples.

We reached the waterfront and saw a series of bridges and alleyways that we knew would consume our afternoon before we saw everything that there is to see. We were ok with this. Getting lost in the street of Venice is half the reason why you come to this place.

The first half of our day started off very well. We were confident that the second part would be even better.