Thursday August 26

We are packing up to leave Geneva. We are headed to breakfast at Mc Donald's. We are also going to check out the flower clock and perpetual water fountain on Lake Geneva.

The rooms are small but are nice and clean.

We will head to Versailles after breakfast and should be there in about 6 hours. I will try to post tonight depending on the internet connections available.

Bye.

Wednesday August 25 -- 20th Wedding Anniversary!

Here is a little more about the Vodafone stuff and why yesterdays post was posted today: We went to the Vodafone store (the only one in Venice) on Tuesday and again they did not have Internet sticks for Italy... and the pay as you go phone was 49 Euros....around $65.00 ....we will wait until France or Great Britain before we get or if we get a mobile phone at all.

So,  since we left Germany, I have been purchasing 24 hour increments of roaming Internet access at 15 Euros a shot. Now what I did not realize was it has a limit of 50 megabytes. Now as you can tell, I'm loading a lot of pictures...and they take a lot of megabytes. I had to purchase 3 separate Internet sessions alone yesterday! Now I thought that would be enough for all the pictures I wanted to post yesterday....wrong! After I wrote the entire previous post I checked the megabyte usage and thought I had enough to add 1 last picture....wrong again! The Internet stopped right before I hit the "post" button. I did not want to buy another session so that post had to wait until we got to Switzerland on Wednesday. Yes you guessed it...we just arrived in Geneva. The rooms are really nice. The Internet costs 22 Swiss Francs per 24 hour period but this time without a limit on content. I will put a lot of pictures on this post.

Today is our 2oth Wedding anniversary. Audra and I were up until 1:15 AM last night doing laundry and packing to leave early today. I set my alarm to be sure we got a early start. I woke up around 7:00 AM without the alarm. I wanted to let Audra sleep in so I turned off my alarm. Unfortunately, I closed my eyes. The next thing I knew it was 8:45. A little late but no worries.... just a 7 hour scenic drive ahead of us to Switzerland. We left the Venice apartment at 11:15 AM and took the people ferry back to the parking structure. It traveled right down the Grand Canal. I videotaped the journey. It was really scary, there were too many boats going in all directions and we almost hit head on into a large barge as we passed under a bridge. Both boats had to hit reverse quickly! Just another day in Venice.

We decided to take a more scenic route today through the Swiss Alps and around Lake Geneva which is the largest lake in Europe. It is 72 kilometers long and is shaped like a crescent. It is beautiful.
Audra did 6 loads of laundry in these small machines.

Leaving Venice

Italians love their cars so much, they even eat above the highway so they can see them go by. These Auto Grills were all over (literately) the place.

Getting fuel in Italy.

Snacks at fuel stop.

Steve, these pictures are for you.

View from top of Switzerland Alps.

I wanted to have a nice anniversary dinner in a restaurant on the way to Geneva. We stopped at a town called Brig Gils in Switzerland. We could not read the menu and nobody spoke English. We went to a supermarket and bought sandwich stuff and stopped on the side of the road and had a great meal. Except for the funky fish sandwich Audra picked out...yuk!

Anniversary dinner at the side of the road.

Sunset on Lake Geneva in Switzerland

Sunset on the Alps

Tunnel in Switzerland.

Tunnel at night. Audra took this and we thought it was cool.

Tomorrow it is up early and off to Versailles then Paris.

Until tomorrow....

Tuesday August 24 continued.....

I know this is a day late and I will explain on the next post.

Hello again. As I said in the earlier post, we got a late start today. We had no idea what to expect in Venice during the day. When we began our walking adventure all we had on the agenda was: Vodafone store and the Rialto Bridge over the Grand Canal. What we did not expect was that it seemed that an extra 20,000 people were roaming the streets. It was soooooo hot out, around 86 degrees. As you are walking around you had about 6 inches of clearance between you and everything like the walls, the person next to you etc......no space. For those of you that are claustrophobic, I recommend you only go out at night. It must be that the cruise ships add to the population by day (my guess) and they all disappear at the end of the day.

By the way, we had very little toilet paper in the apartment and since we do not have a mobile phone we could not call Paola our landlord. You would think no problem, just go to the store and buy more right? Well guess again. We added a new agenda item: find toilet paper! After asking 5 locals how to find a store that sells it we finally found a small store that sold cleaning supplies. Remember, they use bidet's here, weird device.

I could put a lot of cool pictures here but the ripoff Vodafone Internet connection will cost me $50 to post them all, Here are some highlights.

Wandering along with all of my new friends.

View from Railto Bridge.

Everyone went home.

All of us at the top of the Accademia Bridge

Leaning tower of Venice.

Oh no, dead end.

Whoops, dead end again.

Water taxi ride.

Looking at the Apt.

Gondola ride.

We have a long road trip tomorrow. We are taking the scenic route and may even see the Matterhorn on our way to Geneva Switzerland.

Tuesday August 24

We slept in today for a change. I'm sitting at the kitchen table looking out at the canal enjoying my instant Starbucks coffee. We had a great day yesterday. Before I update today's post here is a little bit of history about our mobile phone purchase attempt. When we were in Munich we went to 3 Vodafone stores in the main plaza and the first one did not have any Internet cards. The second one had Internet cards but could not take credit cards so they could not activate a pay as you go phone for us. I bought the Internet card with 3o days of unlimited time just to make sure we had an Internet connection for the duration of our trip. However, when we were in Austria we were prompted to pay for an additional day of Internet access since were were "roaming". The same thing happened here in Italy, we had to pay for another day of access because we are roaming. Now when we go to France AND GB we will have to pay again AARRGGHH.

Here is the hotel we stayed in Brechtesgadan

One of our first stops today is the Vodafone store in Venice to get a phone and learn about the roaming fees...

Now on with the post.

The Eagle's Nest was absolutely beautiful. We had a small English speaking tour and the young woman stated that there is always a cloud covering the top of the mountain so we were very lucky to enjoy this view today.

400 meter tunnel leading to the elevator to the top of the Eagles Nest

If you look carefully you can see Audra in pink on the very right lower corner of the patio.

We traveled 260 miles south to Venice traveling at an average speed of 90 MPH. The roads are great and we went through many tunnels that were over 6 kilometers in length.

Entering Italy.

Tired tourist.


On our way to St. Marcos Square on the water.

On the way to St. Marcos Square on foot.

Excellent live music in the square.

Venice is a little too dirty for me. There is trash everywhere; in the water, in the walkways and when you walk down any small street it smells like someone has relieved themselves.



View from Apt. living room.

View from kitchen.

Today we are going exploring through Venice. I will post again tonight.

Ciao!

Monday August 23

We arrived in Venice Italy around 6:00 PM. We parked the car and took the passenger ferry trip through the grand canal on the way to our apartment. Venice is really beautiful but a little smelly. We got off the ferry at the wrong stop and I could not figure out how to use the payfone..more about that later. It is about 11:00 PM here and I'm exhausted. I will post pictures tomorrow morning.

Sunday August 22 Breakfast in Fuessen, Dinner in Austria and Sleep in Berchtesgaden

This was the busiest day so far. We got up had a delicious breakfast (included) at the hotel and headed to the Neushwanstein Castle. We got there at 10:00 AM and it was really busy with tourists, imagine that! We took a horse drawn buggy (with 8 of our new friends) and went up to the castle. It takes 20 minutes to get to the top then another 15 minute walk to the entrance. When we got there we were among 300 other tourists waiting to take the tour. Unfortunately, the next tour we could take was over two hours later.

We decided to go to the next castle Herrenchimsee which is on the island of Chiemsee.

We then went to Salzburg Austria to see the birthplace of Mozart. It was really busy there and we decided to have dinner in the open plaza area outside, really cool. We then headed to Berchtesgaden and check in to our hotel. We were 30 minutes late and almost lost our ability to check in. The gal behind the counter was really nice and checked us in anyway.

We had the most  UNBELIEVABLE lightning and thunder storm ever at 2:00 AM. I video taped some of it and let me tell you, it was LOUD! We are off today to Hitler's Eagle's Nest and then down to Venice Italy!