More time in Venice

We spent about 2 full days and a full $2000 on our Venice trip.  We saw some wonderful things while there, but I found especially interesting a tall ship called Amerigo Vespucci, the sailor that America is named after. I have always been fond of tall ships and this one was great.  I only wished we had seen it with its sails up. There were also 2 huge cruise ships that landed in Venice.  What a sight they were!
We found out that you have to be careful when eating in venice.  We had 3 bowls of spaghetti and a drink each and it came to 53 Euros ($80).  We stopped for to Colas and 2 cookies and the price was 18.3 Euros.  It was ridiculous.  We were able to find Deb and Cait souvenirs.
When we got back to Lido, we decided to go out for a quick meal.  We found a pizzaria about 3 blocks from our hotel.  There we all had a reasonable meal, but had to put up with about 30 young boys at a birthday party.  They had food fights, were screaming at a soccer game, and were about as loud as thunder the whole time.  I also got to see some European basketball on Sky sport.  They played like a second level college team and were very awkward.  I still can't believe the Lakers lost to Barcelona last weekend because this was not good B-ball.
I passed my cold onto my wife, Deb.  So we both spent most of the night coughing.  We had to get up at 3:30 to catch the ferry to the mainland so we could get our rent a car back.  But the ferry did not leave as planned and we ended up being late for the rent a car by about 10 minutes.  I had stopped to refuel, as the agreement with Hertz went.  Even though, there was a 101 euro charge for fuel on my bill.  I plan to look into it, I will not pay this amount.  I had only gone about 110 miles in a Fiat Panda for pete's sake.  It was something like 10 liters of gas to fill it up.  Something is wrong here and I intend to find out what!  When I took the car back, there was no information regarding parking the car, so I took it to the rent a car building.  After talking to the woman (who cold not het it through her head nthat I had fueled the car up), she said to leave the key.  I told her that it was right out front, did she want me to put the car somewhere.  She had me take the car back to the rental lot, which was 1/2 a mile from our departure gate.  I doubt I use Hertz again!

The trip back was also memorable.  Every airport we left from had us take a bus to the plane we were taking.  In Paris we took a bus from the gate we landed at, to another ate where we took another bus to the plane.  This is no way to run an airport!  Deb and I continued to have coughing fits and were just miserable.  We made it back to Ambialet and were happy to be home.  As mentioned previously, pictures of Venice will be coming.  They can never do the place justice, but it is better than nothing.