• So we got to Venice around 2 in the afternoon or so.
• I had gourmet cheese and bread and fruit and some of Sarah's chocolate at a rest stop for lunch, and it was lovely. I like pigging out on bad-for-you foods.
• Rest stops in Italy have cappucino bars and snazzy fancy sandwiches, as well as wineries and more cheese than you can shake a sausage at.
• Every convenience store in Europe has Pringles. That's the one thing you can count on.
• Everyone else in the tour group is eating chocolate bars and cookies for meals.
• I'm losing my jonesing for chocolate. Guess I've had enough.

  

• Ok, so we did a quick orientation of Venice and walked all over trying to find Sarah her shot glass, since she's collecting one from each city. It took about an hour and a half to find a merchant that sold shot glasses, and then of course we started seeing them EVERYWHERE.
• That's how it always is.
• I coveted every lamp in a Murano Glass Lamps shop, but I'm not that rich.
• Why aren't I a mega-billionaire yet?
• I couldn't believe how crowded Venice is. It's really amazing.
• We picked up Mimosa-in-a-bottle for the gondola ride, and the gondolier wouldn't let us drink it.
• Which is fine by me... I can live a whole 40 minutes without booze.
• The group in the gondola in front of us (who were in our tour group) were so irate about it, though, they got our gondolier's name and reported him.
• You don't mess with Contikis!

  

• This big fat idiot clown terrorized a little girl by making her a balloon animal and breaking the balloons in her face, on purpose. Her screams made me want to push both Paglicacci and her stupid parents into one of the filthy green sewer-canals.
• Anyway, then the whole tour group went to a little Italian restaurant with another Contiki group.
• Holy hell breaking loose, Batman.
• We had the Aussie Aussie Aussie chant going (esp. since yesterday was the Footy Finals and Brisbane won) and our group sung "Hey, Baby."The other group sung "Who Let the Dogs Out" which is probably their Day Song or something, which is tragic.
• We had unlimited free wine and beer.
• You figure it out.
• Jeri couldn't even sit up in her chair by dessert.
• The food was so good. Grilled veggies for antipasto, pasta, eggplant parmisian. And a slushy lemon ice to top it all off.
• Amy from Toronto carried Jeri back to the ferry. I fell asleep on the boat.
• Italy doesn't have toilet seats on public toilets, yet they still expect you to pay.
• You know, they deserve McDonald's. Just for that.

  

• Our hotel room was nice but it was so tiny, there wasn't a proper shower in the bathroom. Just a shower head spraying down onto the toilet, with a curtain you could pull around you.
• And a metal toilet-paper cover. Wow.

Rome, if you want to!