Leaving Venice today. Started off the morning with church bells as our alarm clock. We learned from our gondolier that there are 141 churches in Venice. After cleaning up, we headed off to San Marco for Palm Sunday Mass. While Palm Sunday is notoriously 1.5 hours in the US, we were in and out in under an hour. Amazing how much time singing takes. The kids got their palms, (olive branches here) and we listened to the Passion of Christ under a ceiling of gold mosaics and in Italian.
After breakfast we left Venice and its canals behind. Our next stop, Marco Polo airport to pick up a rental car. Too bad Jason lost his driver's license-he can't drive. After squeezing 4 suitcases, 2 rucksacks, and 1 stroller in our Alfa Romeo-I set off for Cortona. I am so used to driving in the UK now-I had to think about which side to drive on.
Although we were on the freeway-the Italians still made their own way a few times. Ex: drive on a 2 lane road in the right lane, get passed on the left and have another impatient driver make his own lane to the left of that.
We stopped in a small town outside Bologna for lunch. The only place we could find open on a Sunday was a little bar with no English spoken at all. We ordered the kids a pizza and we got little sandwiches and some white wine and a liter of sparkling water. The man (always seems to be an older married couple working) brought us a few more appetizers-ham and figs and what we think was bologna. We ended with an espresso and ice cream for the kids.
I wasn't driving fast enough for Jason so he took over for the rest of the 4 hour drive. Good thing too-most of the driving was well over 80-90 mph and we traversed what must've been 20+ bridges and really long tunnels. I hate bridges. And now I hate tunnels-especially 900 meter tunnels. I think I have developed a bit of claustrophobia.
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