Big sky baldwins: Venice~Port #1

Here we go. I love to travel. I have ever since I lived in Germany for 18 months when I was 21 years old. I was there to serve a church mission, which if you don't know what that is you can find more {HERE}. I figured out on my long travel day home, that I have visited 14 countries and 20 U.S. states. My friend Melanie, who went with me on this trip, has been to more countries outside the U.S. than she has been to U.S. states. My last trip was to Scotland and Ireland back in April of 2006, when I was 3 months pregnant with Sophie. It was TIME to go again. My wonderful husband, who stayed home and watched the kids for me, has no interest in going to Europe. WHAAAAAT? I know, he doesn't, so I make the sacrifice and go with friends. :)
I really wanted to go to Scandinavia. Really bad. But, it is a more expensive trip and the cruise lines didn't offer anything that really 'spoke' to me. Then I found this cruise, from Norwegian Cruise Line. Venice, Italy, Koper, Slovenia, Split, Croatia, Dubrovnik, Croatia, Messina, Italy, Naples, Italy and Rome, Italy. Sounded great to me. I had been to Venice and Rome before, but still great cities to see.

Melanie and I went to BYU together and graduated from the FLIGHT PE program together. We went on a cruise back in 2004 to Cabo, Mazatlan, and some other Mexican port. Starts with a V. Oh, Peurto Vallarta. Melanie served a mission to Slovenia, so her language skills were totally helpful along our Adriatic port stops. We met up in SLC and flew non-stop to Paris France. 10 hours. We had a 4 hour layover in Paris, then a quick 1 hour 30 min flight into Venice. We arrived around 5 PM, stayed the night, and our cruise left at 5 the next day and we were on the ship by 3PM, so it was a whirlwind day.

Ok, enough back ground. But I wanted to mention that Melanie and I both have the same camera and so we brought and shared out lenses. I used mostly a middle zoom lens and a portrait lens, but mostly a little zoomer. Mel used a wide angle lens, and the big zoom lens. We loved the wide angle lens. She taught me how to use the manual mode, so I wasn't on auto the whole trip:) Yeah. And our goal was to capture lifestyle along with architecture. So there are a lot of people shots and laundry shots. I love the laundry shots. I will post a city a day, so off to Venice I take you...

We made it to Paris!

Waiting at gate 27 with our Euros.

About 5 minutes after we got off the plane in Paris, I was looking at Melanie and talking and ran right in to a huge column. Didn't even see it. Smacked me right in my temple. Didn't really hurt though, but as we waited and the 4 hours came to a close, I started to have some vertigo. I didn't know if was from smacking my head, or taking my thyroid medicine at a weird time, or that we were exhausted from the flight. (I had flown from Bozeman to SLC earlier in the day). Anyway, we were standing waiting to board, and I told Melanie how my scarf made me look European. Then we looked at my Camo fanny back and busted up laughing because that wasn't European in any way. It is probably way more funny for us, but we couldn't stop laughing. Tears in our eyes, laughing at anything possible. It was great.

Almost to Venice. Looking out our airplane window.

We had to ask a few people to help find out hotel, but we found it and then hit the town. We were excited to get some night shots, because for the rest of the ports, the "all aboard" was during daylight hours.

You will also notice I am sporting a camo binocular harness. I took this from Chris and attached it to my camera and it took all the weight of the camera off my neck. It also kept the camera from flopping around when you are walking. Melanie was skeptical, but I loved it. And I had a little piece of my honey whilst I was gone.

Love the reflection.

Melanie's wide lens made taking these incognito picture possible. We were so excited at the end of the day when we would upload the pictures and see some great people shots.