Venice, city of Amazing Beauty!!

Yesterday, Thursday 26th was our last wonderful day in Florence. We did some more hiking to gorgeous cathedrals, found an ancient cemetary and sample more gelato at the Florence Gelato Festival. We left Florence around 2 pm and Ashlee and I were on separate coaches on the train. Although, I was lucky to have seats next to 2 Russian ladies from Moscow. We started chatting about life and it turned into an hour 1st discussion . It started off with the ladies seeing me read a conference Ensign and I showed them the pretty picture on the front of the Salt Lake temple, and said that I was a member of this church. That lead to them asking what the difference was in my church and the Cathilic or Orthodox. Well, let me tell you.. and I can do it all in Russian :) They were very kind and attentive, not all the time though, but I was happy to share. I brought pass along cards with me, and gave one to each and pointed out the website.

We arrived in Venice, exhausted from hiking in the morning and needing to once again orient ourselves to a new, but gorgeous, city. We walked to a bus station, got on bus 6 and asked people about our bus stop. Bless these lovely Italian people, they dont quite know their way, but they are willing to help. We are staying at Camp Jolly, a nice place FAR from Venice, but we have our own little bungalo, with an attached bathroom and shower! Each place gets closer, in Rome, we had to walk down a path about 3 minutes, in Florence it was down the hall and some stairs, and now we have it attached!

This morning, Friday, we walked to the bus stop and had to wait an hour for the bus to come! Some girls said that there was a strike and transport wasnt getting in our out of Venice. But when we got to the city we didnt see anything unusual. Our only destination was St. Mark's Basillica and we mozied around all the little streets and it took about 3 hours to reach it. So many beautiful little streets, waterways and bridges. I was amazed!

The Basillica was built in the 11th century and has golden mosaic walls and ceilings. It is built out of multi colored marble, and the floors are even made of multi colored mosaic. A Basillica is a cathedral that holds the remains of a saint, and the remains of the apostle Mark are held here.

Wow, wow, wow!

Love, robyn

P.S. Skychayu po tebe i hochy videt tebya skoro!!