Bremen's Venice

So for Easter this year, we drove down to Venice (that's in Italy). We had wanted to go skiing, but because the weather had been so warm, we figured all the snow would be gone. The day before we left on our trip, it snowed over an inch. Luckily that had melted by the time we had to drive, but it was cold. Luckily, our online directions were slightly inaccurate and the trip took on 6 hours instead of 7.

Our hotel was on the mainland (Venice is an island with only one access bridge which only opened in 2006), so we found it and a place to get groceries and dinner before heading to bed. The next morning we drove to the pier and took a ferry-boat to the island. Bremen professed even before we got off the boat that he wanted to live in Venice and never leave. (My profession of never wanting to leave occurred in the grocery store's cheese aisle-I could just live in the store, if they'd let me, please!)

I'd done a bit of research (as I do before any trip) and the guide books recommended just wandering around the city, which is mostly what we did. We leisurely followed the signs to St. Mark's Square (St. Mark's body is at the church there-yep!) where Bremen purchased corn from a smiling old italian guy to feed the pigeons. He loved it! They didn't hop into his hand, but came dang close. They ate out of his hand, which produced one of the biggest smiles I've ever scene. he became concerned at my suggestion to run around the square, because he said he didn't want to run into the pigeons. He relaxed this stance as he watched many of the other children running around without inflicting damage to the birds. (his concern is so funny becuase i have pictures of him chasing pigeons in every country we've visited)

He loved the ferryboat ride, the gondola ride, the boat-bus ride down the Grand Canal, the pizza/pasta, ice cream, pigeons, the water everywhere, ice cream, bridges everywhere, playing tag through one of the more desterted squares, ice cream, jumping back and forth on the two beds in the hotel, watching 'the news' (we don't have television at home and one of the hotel's two channels was CNN, so we watched that), and just being with his family for four days in a row. I don't understand it, but the kid likes his parents. Go figure.

The weather held up pretty nicely for us. It was cold enough to need gloves and a hat and scarf, but the rain only came at night, and the sun came out for at least a little while every day. On the way home, as soon as we hit the mountains (Dolomites) everything was covered in snow and it started falling. A major storm had hit the mountains all weekend. I guess we could have gone skiing after all.

This trip has a the designation of being the first Bremen Photographically Documented Trip. He enjoyed taking pictures immensely. We'll have to work on patience, as many of his shots were blurred or distorted by his quickness to get everything on...can't say film anymore...pixels(?). I love his record of our trip and it surprised me how many of our pictures almost matched exactly. He made about 200 shots. These are the ones I picked to share with you. He took every one of them!

On a side note: I don't think we'll run into a problem with Bremen having confidence in life. As we were looking over his pictures on the computer (Kevin and I praising many of them), Bremen says "My pictures are cooler than yours, Mama." Of course I agreed with him.