This would have been the best way to tour Venice, in your own personal mega-yacht. Maybe in my next life.

There are some really cool huge clocks on buildings around Europe. They are very interesting.

Here's Mauro making Ian a glass frog. It was really interesting to watch him make it. The kids really liked this.

Venice has so many very unique beautiful old buildings. We took a tour down the Grand Canal listening to an audio tour tell us about what we were seeing. The audio guides are great to help you understand what you are seeing.

Megan, Ashley, and Ian took off their shoes and waded in the water outside St. Mark's Basilica.
6-18-10 Friday
I did a 50 mile ride in the morning. I was thinking I needed to do a 15 minute time trial to see what kind of watts/power I could put out. I was just riding along fairly fast putting out about 280 watts then ramped it up from there. I didn’t exactly start, but looked down at my time when I was putting out about 320 Watts and decided to try and hold it above that for 15 minutes. At about what I thought was 13 minutes, I was going to start ramping it up as you can normally hold watts about 10-20% above what you can maintain for only a couple of minutes. Right then I came to an intersection and a car kind of cut me off. I lost all my momentum and had to stop, so I ended my time trial there. When I got back and analyzed it, it was actually about 14 minutes long, and I ended up averaging 330 watts, which is pretty good for me. A month ago, I did a time trial out at Salt Air, and did the time trial in just under 15 minutes and averaged only 305 watts. I do think I’ve gotten stronger in the last month.
I took Megan, Ian, and Ashley into Venice while Kindra, Brecken, and Mitzi went to the beach. We went to a place I had found in TripAdvisor that was one of the highest rated things to do in Venice. He’s a glass artist and will make what you want while you watch. We had Ian pick something for him to make, and he made a frog for Ian. It was really cool to watch him form the body, the fingers and toes, the eyes, and everything. The kids really enjoyed it, then I bought a vase for Kindra. We had recorded audio guides of some of the things we’d see from Rick Steve’s website, and we listened to his guide as we rode the vaporetto all the way down the Grand Canal to St. Mark’s Square. We then toured St. Mark’s Basilica. Because of some of the rain a couple of days ago, some of the square and in front of the church was flooded a little. The kids enjoyed walking through the water and over some of the raised walkways. It’s amazing how the domes, ceilings, and walls of the basilica look like they have beautiful paintings, but they are really mosaics. There is a great big golden thing that’s made out of gold and is probably 4-6’ tall by about 6-8’ wide and decorated with gems. It has intricate pictures on it and was pretty amazing. We then toured the Doge’s Palace. The Doges were the rulers of Venice. Brad especially liked the display of weapons including cross-bows, swords, and arrows. Ian especially liked the prison and the Bridge of Sighs. I had a great day with the kids in Venice.