Our party grows

It feels weird to sleep in on the one full day you have devoted for Venice, but we were picking up Sofia and Anna from the Mestre station around noon, so we slept in. Unforteuntaely, the airline lost Anna's luggage, so some clothes shopping was required before we'd go to Venice.

We picked them up from the train station and went to H&M in a mall. This was a proper indoor mall, as nice as any of them in the States back when we had malls. "We still have malls," Bella corrected me. Okay, I guess so.

We spent quite a while shopping for clothes, and of course everyone founds things to buy, even those who hadn't lost their luggage.

We grabbed a coffee before leaving the mall.

We got to the Airbnb and the girls dropped off their stuff and refreshed a little. I made a quick lunch of ravioli with pesto.

We walked to the bus stop (first buying tickets at the corner store) and caught the bus to Venice. I think we finally crossed the lagoon and got to Venice proper around 6 pm.

Walking to the bus stop in Mira

We walked around Venice and did the normal Venice tourist stuff: admired the canals, dodged through crowds of tourists, window shopped, and scouted restaurants.

My hat was very faded and stained, and I'd been meaning to buy a new one at some point during this trip. I finally found a decent one in Venice, right at St. Mark's Square. Cristina's hat that she got in Rome got rained on in Padua and was starting to deteriorate, so she also bought a new hat near St. Mark's.

We ate dinner at Ristorante Cico. Sofia was the only one really jetlagged (Sweden is in the same time zone), so she was struggling with energy level and appetite.

We had to have a wee jog to catch the 10:30 bus back to Mira, so we wouldn't have to wait for a midnight bus. We made it home by 11ish, showered and hit the sack.