A Sunrise in the Mountains and A Sunset in Venice

Wow...what an amazing time Natalie and I have had here! In the last few days, we haven't been getting home until after midnight so I haven't had a chance to blog at all. Let me begin from Thursday...we decided that it would be a neat experience to go watch the sunrise from the rifugio one morning while we were here. Problem was, we had to wake up at 4:30 because the drive took at least 40 minutes. Oh, man today was going to be a long day because we had planned to go to Venice again and to the small island of Murano so we had a lot to do with little sleep! We woke up and hustled up the mountain to get there before the sun came up. We arrived to a beautiful blue sky with the valley of Vittorio Veneto underneath us and then as far as you could see to Venice. It was spectacular to watch the sun come up over the mountains and shine on the valley below. Nat and I found ourselves with some company to watch the sunrise with, some donkey/mule/horse animals! We weren't sure what they were but they were fun to watch on the hills. After we went back down the mountain, we stopped at a cafe to have a cappuccino and a brioche filled with marmalade. Delicious! I went back to sleep for 1 hour before I had to get up and babysit the girls until mid afternoon. Natalie brought them a music toy from Idaho that they have been obsessed with! It lights up and plays 5 or so songs and they just love it. Giulia told Gianna that it is the best present ever! After Gianna got home for lunch, we were off to Venice and Murano for the night! We drove to the Venice airport to catch the water bus to Murano. It was a longer bus ride than we thought because there were a lot of stops on the way and it was really hot! We finally arrived to Murano and it was a very pretty island with little shops everywhere along the canals. Murano is famous for glass blowing and creating all kinds of glass objects, from chandeliers to earrings. We didn't realize it for a little bit but all the shops were closing around 6pm so we had to hurry and try to look through all the stores before they closed. I have no idea why they close so early in the peak of tourist season but we thought it was very strange. We ended up getting many fun things to bring back. We are just hoping that none of it breaks on the trip back! After we were finished seeing Murano, we took another water bus back to San Marco because Nat and I were determined to ride in a gondola! It is just one of those things that you have to check off your list while you are in Venice, even if it costs 50 euro per person! We just had to do it... We had an interesting gondola ride! Our gondolier was a little pushy for us to look at everything he wanted us to look at and his buddy on the boat next to him wanted to take me out for wine after the boat ride. Nat and I pretended not to notice all the comments being flown our way and just enjoy the ride! It was about 45 minutes long and we enjoyed every minute of it, very much worth the 50 euro! We figured we hadn't eaten dinner yet and it was about 9:00 by then so we found a restaurant down the boardwalk and ate crepes and a club sandwich, with prosciutto of course! We figured we could take the water bus from San Marco all the way to the airport on one water bus but it didn't work out that way...we ended up having to wait on another island called Lido for more than an hour for another water bus to take us to the airport. We didn't get home that night until after 1:00 am and we were beyond exhausted...what a long day! It was all worth it but man, it was a hot and tired day! It felt wonderful to arrive home and be in bed, all showered and ready for a little amount of sleep before we started it again the next day!