Venice, Nice, and Ardèche...finally!

So as you probably know, I had an action packed vacation in April and am just now getting around to writing about it. But not for lack of material! I spent a week and a half in (and around) Venice on a beautiful bike and boat trip. Then I spent three days in Nice, checking out the Cote d'Azure (it really is Azure!) and finally I spent the weekend in Ardèche with friends celebrating Rémy and Sushi's 4 year anniversary in a country house in the middle of rolling hills and cow pastures (far enough away to make for a pleasant view without the accompanying not so pleasant smell). So I'll start with Venice.


I met up with my parents in Venice after discovering that in fact all the ferries to our B&B closed before I even got there, and so finally I took a nice night ride in a water taxi and was greeted by a sleepy but very happy Daddy. My mom booked an adorable B&B on the island of Murano, where Venetian glass is made and where the masters work, so we spent the next day wandering around the different glass studios and watching demonstrations (A glass horse is not as hard to make as it seems! Not that I could do it...) In the afternoon, we went on an adventure with all of our luggage to find the boat that would take us allong our bike tour. It was kind of like a treasure hunt! The directions were not at all correct, and after crashing a little Italian child's birthday party, Mom saw with her eagle eyes that our boat was several docs over. So we went in search of said dock, and after one or two mishaps, we wandered into a large boat yard at the end of which was our little Dutch cannal boat waiting to greet us. It's name is Vita Punya, which means "Life is a struggle." How apropro.

We were greeted by our incredible tour leader, Hein, who is Dutch and has lived all over the world. Our whole trip was constantly enlightened by his musings on life (always very apt!) and his consistant and goofy smile. He truly made the tour - he was a ball of fire, full of energy and always ready to chat. And if ever something didn't go according to plan, well, we learned that "that's how life is" and we moved on with it.

The bike trip was 8 days between Venice and Mantova, a city to the west of Venice. We followed the Po river delta, and so we saw a lot of water and farms and beautiful poppies everywhere! Dad was all decked out in his gear, including a fancy rear view miror that clipped onto his sunglasses. Mom and I went more for comfort but still looked pretty good with our bike gloves and diaper biking shorts. There were about 20 of us on the trip, from all over the world. Aside from me and another girl who was traveling with her mother (14) most people were between their late 30s and 70s. This made for wonderful stories, charming personalities, and an inspiring trip! I hope that I am doing bike trips when I'm in my 70s! Each day we biked between 45 and 65 km, usually around 50 km. We always stopped at least once, and often twice for coffee and also for lunch, so we had a very relaxing trip. At night we ate delicious Italian food cooked by a girl my age who learned to cook from her mother. Real home cooking!
Highlights of the trip:
- Standing on a wall down the middle of Lado (I think) and seeing the Sea on both sides! That's how narrow the island is! Incredible!
- Seeing flamingos taking off while biking through a private aquaculture
- Watching the re-assembly of the Captain's room of the Vita Punya
- Wandering around the medieval commerce streets with Mom in Ferrara
- Watching a fellow biker (who was using an electric bike because he had had a stroke) zoom ahead of everyone else as they struggled against the head on wind. He turned around and smiled with such endearing pride!
- Hanging out with Mom and Dad in our itty bitty tiny room on the boat. It was so small that only one person at a time could fit between the two beds that were on either side of the room. MMmm cozy.
- A lesson in coffee - aka the millions of ways to order it - in Italy from the Italian somalier that was biking with us for the week (whose wine we drank all week also - it was wonderful)

So those are some of the highlights from the bike, which was all around beautiful, fun, and rewarding, even (or especially) when it rained!

After the bike trip, Mom, Dad, and I spent three days in Venice. I'll finish this part later.