I’ve worked on two newsboys albums in the past but this time around I was given a bit more creative freedom. Newsboys were working with a few new writers on this album - Juan Otero and Seth Mosley (The Write Brothers) who are both so nice and amazingly talented. I’m so thrilled I got to be a part of this project from it’s infancy when we were listening to Write Brothers demos at Inpop. I had the pleasure of going to a recording session at The Write Brother’s studio when they were tracking vocals for Born Again with Mike Tait way back in September of last year. Then around December of last year I started on the packaging, was involved in the cover shoot with my friend David Molnar (who is a crazy talented photographer) and then began the whirlwind press onslaught… I’m pretty sure I made over 100 banner ads, print ads, website splash pages, email templates and more to advertise the album.

Around early May I believe is when we finally finished packaging… which ended up almost exactly how I wanted it to look, which is rare. I also got to use a bunch of my live photos of newsboys from the 2 festivals they brought me to in Europe in the inside packaging. I love it when I get to use my own photos in my design work.

The album finally released last week to rave reviews and the best newsboys street week ever - 45,311 units. It was #4 on the Billboard overall chart, beneath only Sting, Eminem and MIA.

Right before we hit street date, July 13th, Juan Otero contacted me to do a website for the Write Brothers so they would have something online once the album dropped. I was thrilled to get to work with him yet again, and a few days ago we launched WriteBrosMusic.com. Check it out to hear some of The Write Brothers amazing work and keep up with their projects… you won’t want to miss anything that they work on!

My journey to Haiti actually started a few years ago. A friend brought me to a bible study called Conduit so I could hear a presentation on the mission trip he had just arrived home from - the mission trip was to Jacmel, Haiti. This was in 2008. I kept attending the bible study, and every time they took another trip to Haiti I would ask for information and try to go - but each time the scheduling conflicted with work, or I didn’t have enough vacation time. In December of 2009 they announced there would be a trip going in April 2010. Something told me this was the trip. No matter what, I had to sign up and go on this one. So I did. I wasn’t sure how I was going to pay for it or if I would be able to take off work or anything - but I put down the first deposit and signed up.

Then on January 12th, 2010 the earthquake hit, and Haiti suddenly needed more help than ever. It was hard waiting so many months after the earthquake to leave - I wanted to go help the next day. April 10th was slow in coming. I remember waking up at 3:30am that morning to catch my flight out of Nashville. After a full day of travel in which I ended up taking a nap on the floor of the airport in Miami, we finally arrived into Port-au-Prince a few hours later than expected. The sun was already setting when we embarked on our 3 hour drive through the mountains to Jacmel. Crammed in the awkward middle seat of the front of the van between the driver and a brand new friend, it was an uncomfortable and bumpy ride. We got to see a lot of the tent cities the earthquake refugees are living in, and we drove through the mountains and lush tropical landscape of Hispaniola. Even in the pitch blackness of night people were walking along the roads… men, women and children… without any light. We really take cars, bikes and flashlights for granted. We finally arrived at our hotel in Jacmel late into the night, had dinner, got our room assignments, and headed to bed. Or at least all the smart people did. I stayed up for a while to catch up with my good friend Ben who had already been in Haiti a few weeks and remained there until a few days ago.

Our church and the organizations we partner with have a feeding center, a church and a child sponsorship program. A lot of what we did was centered around those three outreaches. The first day we visited a school where a lot of the kids in our sponsorship program attend. We visited their dark, un-airconditioned classrooms and had a translator deliver messages of encouragement to them while we distributed toys, bubbles, bracelets, candy and more.

We also helped with the feeding program at the ministry center where we feed about 150 kids what is sometimes their only meal of the day. It was amazing to see that some of them even save part of their food to give to the kids outside who aren’t part of the feeding program.

Most of our days were spent simply playing with the children. While most of them aren’t, a lot of them seem like orphans - you never see their parents anywhere in sight - and some of these children are very young… 1,2,3,4,5 years old… ages you typically wouldn’t see kids running around outside by themselves barefoot. They were all fascinated with my camera, and I taught them how to take pictures of each other with it.

The second day I helped paint the house we are building for the pastor of the church we are partnered with there. It’s also going to house families in need. Painting a house with white paint is an interesting experience on an island in the Caribbean. Sunlight reflects off of white paint like it’s a mirror held up to the sun. You are practically blinded if you look right at it. It was super gratifying to see the end result of our day of painting… that’s why I love painting - instant gratification.

Theresa & Darren in front of the house we are building. Theresa heads up the child sponsorship program and Darren heads up Conduit Mission, the non-profit that sponsors the building, the relief efforts and the trips. Darren is also the best pastor ever.

Stay tuned for part II, coming soon…

I built a full wordpress driven website with a store, a facebook, twitter, vimeo and youtube profile, plus worked on improving the SEO of the website and getting Kim ranked higher in her search categories. Here’s an image of the website, please go check it out and tell me what you think! www.kimwoodsandusky.com.

]]> http://blog.breezybaldwin.com/2010/04/kim-wood-sandusky/feed/ http://blog.breezybaldwin.com/2010/03/california-here-we-come/ http://blog.breezybaldwin.com/2010/03/california-here-we-come/#comments Fri, 26 Mar 2010 02:56:18 +0000 Breezy http://blog.breezybaldwin.com/?p=391

So that cat is finally out of the bag. I’m moving to Los Angeles with my twin sister Ally after she graduates from UCF in May. We’ve actually sort-of been planning this move for years. I just always assumed after moving to TN a few years back that it was an impossibility unless I quit my dream job that I worked for so many years to get. Then I realized that there is absolutely no reason I can’t do that job from California. A lot of fun perks like being on the set of music videos and getting to go in the studio for the recording process I have to give up - but I’ll still be doing what I love, and I’ll have a lot more time to pursue other passions of mine that I haven’t had the time for… like mission trips. So after 2 1/2 years in Nashville I will be saying goodbye.

I’ll miss Nashville terribly… I usually complained about the less-than-perfect weather, the cold, and there being no beach or Disney World… but overall it’s been an amazing place to live. The culture is one-of-a-kind and it still amazes me how almost everyone you meet is a musician or songwriter.. or they work in the industry… this truly is “music city” … what better place for a person as obsessed with music as myself?

Anyways… I’ve been getting a lot of the same questions from people and I thought I’d address a few of them here.

Q: Do you have a job out in LA?
A: No. I’m going to be freelancing full-time in the fields of photography, graphic design, web design, videography and video editing, illustration and hopefully doing gallery shows with my paintings and photography… and hopefully even some music/acting.

Q: Are you quitting Inpop?
A: Not really. I won’t be a full-time in-house employee, but I’ll still be doing contracted freelance work for them. My roll and job description are changing but I’ll most likely continue to do the work I’m currently doing for them from California.

Q: When are you leaving?
A: My last official day in Nashville will be the 12th of April as the following day I’ll be going to Haiti for a week, then I’ll be moving back to FL for a few weeks to spend some time with my family and attend my sister’s graduation on May 7th. We’re then moving on the 10th-15th of May. I’ll be stopping in Nashville on that drive (10th-11th) to clear out the rest of my stuff, so this will be the last day I’ll get to say goodbye to anyone if I haven’t already. The official move-in day in Cali will be the 14th of May.

This is where I spend roughly half the year doing random things like fixing the printer, setting up free download pages, updating our newsletter server… all stuff that is super exciting. Then December hits. We go from 0 to 60 in 1 second flat. Inpop tells to me that we have 4 new releases coming out around roughly the same time - late spring/summer. I’ll be doing the photography for some and full packaging and everything else for the rest of them.

In early December we immediately start work arranging the photoshoots. I’m working on finding locations for Jimmy Needham and after hours of driving around, googling and planning we spend an entire day doing nothing but taking photos (see my previous post for those!) It’s fun, but exhausting. The next few weeks I spend editing and organizing those photos and then I start on album cover comps. We meet with Jimmy and his manager to discuss ideas, and after a few weeks I submit some comps. Weeks and weeks of revisions and scrapped comps later, we arrive on a final. Here is a peek at just some of the comps we went through to get the final: http://gallery.me.com/breezy421#100159 (don’t distribute these, please!).

Amid all the Jimmy Needham chaos, we have the newsboys AND Article One photoshoots. Both in the first weeks of January. I did the Article One shoot with just me and the guys down by the river in downtown Nashville. It was probably the best photoshoot I’ve ever done because I’ve done so many shoots with these guys we’re so comfortable with each other now that we knock it out of the park right away. It was super fast and simple and everyone was happy.

Here are some of those pics:

Then came the newsboys shoot. I got to assist a photographer I’ve long admired on this shoot - Mr. David Molnar. My main contribution was getting catering. When I brought it all back I realized that the dude at the burger joint didn’t label any of the 16 different meals so everybody just started eating everybody else’s food… we were way to hungry to care.

After that I began newsboys cover comps. First for the EP, then the full album. All the while doing Article One EP comps and packaging and Jimmy Needham comps. Oh not to mention a big load of freelance projects on the side, like this photoshoot for Alissa… she’s an extremely talented artist that the one and only Paul Colman is working with & producing.

All of February was a huge blur. I finished the newsboys EP and Article One EP packaging and I really liked how they turned out.

Then it was time to work on Superchick packaging. Which I did in one night. Over at Max & Shara’s house. We started at 5pm. Ended at midnight. Max had already completed the cover which is 1/2 the battle. Early that week I think is when we finally settled on the final newsboys and Jimmy covers. I’m getting my time all screwed up but that’s what happens when you don’t really know what day it is to begin with because you go to bed at 4 or 5am every night and wake up the same day a few hours later. It also really throws you off to sleep for an hour on your lunch break which I do regularly. Ha. I love my life, I really do.

]]> http://blog.breezybaldwin.com/2010/03/busy-season/feed/ http://blog.breezybaldwin.com/2010/01/jimmy-needham-shoot/ http://blog.breezybaldwin.com/2010/01/jimmy-needham-shoot/#comments Sat, 23 Jan 2010 08:42:48 +0000 Breezy http://blog.breezybaldwin.com/?p=382 Here are a few shots from a shoot I did with Jimmy for his upcoming album (which I’ll also be doing the artwork for) back in December - Jimmy is such a funny guy and such a pleasure to work with. None of these shots were taken there, but we used Jeremy Cowart’s studio for part of the shoot, which was pretty exciting. I love that guy, and he’s pretty much my main inspiration as a photographer and I got to use his studio. Wow. The shots here were taken at Grimey’s, a great little record store in Nashville… enjoy!

The two festivals were Flevo festival in Apeldoorn, Netherlands and Revo festival in Frankfurt, Germany. What’s amazing about that itinerary is that those were both places I hadn’t gone on my previous European jaunt!

The plane ride was as expected, but what was quite amusing and different about traveling with a band through an airport is all the extra luggage… or road cases rather… even with the stripped-down international set-up (the venue provides as much as possible in the way of equipment and crew) we still had 13 people and about 2 large road cases per person… so imagine a long train of people, a few of whom are rock stars, rolling a procession of those little airport carts chock full of road cases all the way through the airport. The baggage claim people seemed to see us coming, and got extra people to come assist in a speedy check-in. Baggage claim was uber stressful, since there are so many bags to account for…. but all of our bags made it.

Just like with my travels around europe with the trafalgar tour group two months before, we were counting on total strangers, the local festival organizers, to arrange our transportation, hotel and food. Which is always a little strange. I hope to someday travel Europe on my own, but alas, I will just have to wait until I’m old enough to rent a car.

We sat for a long time at the shuttle stop outside Schiphol airport in Amsterdam, waiting for the festival shuttle to come get us. We actually met up with another musician in one of the other bands playing the festival at the shuttle stop - Mojo of the Supertones - which was quite awesome since I was a huge Supertones fan back in the day.

After pilling into the shuttle, we were off on the hour long journey to the festival grounds and our hotel. We stopped on the way at a gas station to eat (another thing I had been accustomed to from my previous europe trip) In Europe, gas stations have much better food than in America. We all got sub sandwiches, and when I asked for mayo on mine, they looked at me very funny and didn’t know what I was saying. Some nice person translated what mayo must be in Dutch, and then they handed me little packets of “frietsaus” which literally translated means “sauce for fries” which explains why when I started squeezing the sauce all over my sub a Dutch guy next to me laughed and said “that’s not for sandwiches! That’s for potato fries!” I quipped that he should try it sometime and he would love it.

After we all payed to use the restrooms (my leftover Euros from my last trip came in handy) we were off again. Our driver was a delightful man named Pim who apparently had been the guys chauffeur the last time they went to Flevo a few years before. On the drive we passed a lot of pretty Dutch countryside, some windmills, and not much else. We finally arrived at the festival grounds, which were covered in tents and out in the middle of nowhere. We sorted out all the backstage passes, the schedule, and all that fun stuff, then went to the stage to do soundcheck. It was a long walk through a little wooded area to the main stage. I still remember that walk vividly because I had to make it 100 times.

At soundcheck I grabbed a lot of fun pictures (I love soundcheck because it’s more laid back then the show, so I tend to take even better shots since I’m not stressed) there were already some early birds there, so I took some pictures of the festival peeps too, and to my great surprise after putting them online a few weeks later, one of the people in my pictures emailed me to tell me it was her and that she was grateful I put the shot online for her to find. The power of the internet!

Flevo is the longest-running and one of the largest Christian music festivals in Europe, and it’s easy to see why… apart from booking a lot of awesome bands, it’s extremely well-organized and they take very good care of the artists. The people behind it are all extremely nice and genuine.

After soundcheck was done, it was time to check into the hotel. Surprise, surprise… the hotel was a Mercure, a kind of nicer holiday inn type deal in Europe. I had stayed in one in Paris a few months before. I had stolen a mechanical pencil. That pencil was still in my purse. Hahah. I roomed with Grace, which was quite fun. I prefer rooming with people to being alone… so much more fun on vacations! Our view out the window depressed me… I always hope for pretty views. Here we were, in Holland, and the view out my window was the front of the hotel. Boo. We were given a few hours to freshen up before heading out to Deventer, the nearby town. Steve (newsboys road manager) claimed that to break the cycle of jetlag, we needed to stay out until at least midnight Netherlands time to reset our internal clocks… which was about 7am Nashville time.  Oh boy.

We arrived at the main square in Deventer (pronounced Day-ven-tear) around 7pm. There wasn’t much happening at the time, but some locals seemed to be setting up a giant projector screen and chairs in the square. We all grabbed some seats at a pub, ordered some drinks, and started to chill. I didn’t feel like chilling out though… I was in Holland! So I got up and announced I was going for a walk. Nobody came with. I started up a street that looked as if it would lead to a giant steeple up the hill, which I could only assume was a gorgeous middle-aged church… and I was right! After a brisk couple minute walk up on the most beautiful cobblestone streets I had ever seen… I arrived at a timeless, perfect church. On my way back down the hill I took another street, praying it would end up back at the square… which it did to my delight. I told everyone about my short little adventure and how wonderful it was, and recruited Grace for another quick trip back up the hill. It was more fun with Grace… we took pictures of each other, and she claims she saw Peter Pan fly out of an open window. I sort-of believe her. If that was possible anywhere it was possible here. It was exactly like a Disney fairytale setting.

After about an hour sitting at the little table of the cute little cafe, the square really started to fill up… and then belly dancers started to perform in front the projector they had set up. I kid you not. After that it finally became apparent to us what was going on (none of us knew Dutch so it was quite hard to determine, you see) when they began the movie Slumdog Millionaire (with Dutch subtitles) it finally clicked… this was some cultural Indian celebration of some sort… complete with belly dancing and the best Bollywood movie of all time! Funny thing is I didn’t see s single Indian person there besides the belly dancers! The Dutch just love celebrating different cultures I guess.

A few of us decided that it wasn’t the best way to spend our time in Holland watching in American film with Dutch subtitles, so Grace, Jojo, Ben and I went off on another adventure… this time to “the bridge in that one war movie”. Someone had heard, from someone, that this town was famous for it’s bridge because it was used in a war movie. We didn’t figure it out there, but upon recent googling I’ve found this to indeed be true: the movie was “A Bridge Too Far”, a movie I had yet to see.

The walk was a very pretty one, past another beautiful church, a Russian nightclub, and down to the river… where the bridge was. We got there right at sunset, and climbed up to it… and noticed something very amusing about the stairs… they had smoothed and grooved bike track through the middle. Holland is of course known for it’s abundance of bikes and bike enthusiasts. Atop the bridge we took lots of pictures and a wonderful video, that my stupid memory card ‘corrupted’ and I lost. I still have the beautiful scene etched in my memory thankfully.

After countless hours sitting and wondering around the square, mostly searching for my food (we ended up eating a lot of fries with mayo) it was time to catch a cab back to the hotel. We had arranged a midnight pick-up with the cab company. They were late. There was an ice cream shop across the way, and I suggested we all go get some yummy European gelato… I went alone. It turns out the temptation was too much to bear however, because after I was done paying, everyone had followed my stead and got in line for their gelato. We had just made it in time, too… they were closing. Whilst enjoying the delicious gelato, we sat in the moonlight bathed cobblestone square, shivering. It got very chilly at night.

We slept very good that night… I don’t even remember waking up in the morning or anything before getting to the festival around 10am the next morning. Why I had to be there, I couldn’t figure out. The show didn’t start until 9pm. There was another soundcheck, but I wasn’t obligated to shoot it. My wild imagination and ADD began to kick-in hardcore, and I went up to the festival organizers and took a huge gamble: I asked if there was a way they could arrange a trip to Amsterdam for me. I was willing to pay the cab fare, no matter how expensive. To my surprise, not only were they totally cool with this, they were excited about it. They got Pim, our chauffeur from the day before, to find me a ride. A FREE ride. Along came David, one of the festival employees, who had nothing to do. They told me David could drive me in one of the “shuttles” (actually a cute little european car) to Amsterdam, give me a tour of the city, and return me to the venue. Doesn’t get much better than that.

We made the hour journey north back up to Amsterdam, talking about everything from the weather, to religion, to politics, to the always popular topic between international visitors and locals: the differences between our countries. I never get tired of talking to Europeans about America, and vise-versa.

When you arrive in Amsterdam you pass (or perhaps drive over, depending which direction you come from) one of the coolest bridges I’ve ever seen in my life. I couldn’t get a good photo of it sadly, but the bridge is called Enneüs Heermabrug, and it’s amazing. I love cool bridges. You also pass a lot of very modern, fun architecture on the way into Amsterdam.

We began our long walk through the city, just randomly crisscrossing the canals and wandering through markets and side streets… observing the locals, taking in the sights… my favorite thing to do! We eventually found Anne Frank’s house, which we decided not to do, since it was an hour wait to get inside. It was good enough for me to see the outside. We then bought some fresh Dutch cookies at a little shop… the Dutch make some mighty awesome cookies. We stumbled into the infamous Red Light District for a bit… quite sad and disturbing. After we passed through we came into when I can only assume was one of the central squares of the city - since it was huge, with thousands of bikes parked in bike racks on the sides of the street.

We wandered out of the square and down another, and there was some festival happening on a float in the canal, and the canal was packed with boats so densely you couldn’t see the water… and if you wanted to you could easily just walk across hopping from boat to boat. It was quite similar to Venice in this regard… the canals were used as streets, more so than the streets themselves were. Sadly, it finally it came time to say goedag to Amsterdam and head back to the festival!

That night was spectacular, the ‘boys and newworldson (the other band on our label playing there that night) were brilliant and Flevo fest had the best lighting set-up of any festival I had ever been too, which made my job as photographer at LOT easier. They also had a kick ass crowd… the Dutch can ROCK! There were about 15,000 people and almost every single one of them was on their feet rockin’ out the whole show.

The next morning we had to wake up bright and early for our drive to Frankfurt… or Grossostheim rather, a small town south of Frankfurt. Our ride was much better than the previous day. We had an entire double-decker (or double dutch as someone clever called it) coach. I sat up top with Grace, Jojo, Duncan, Ben and Mike… and some of the Bluetree guys, who shared the bus with us. Their Irish accents were highly amusing to listen to. Most people slept the whole drive… but I stayed awake, except for the 20 minutes in which we apparently passed a magnificent castle. Just my luck. We tried to decipher when we arrived in Germany… because there is no border station between the Netherlands and Germany… and we finally relized the name for exits had switched to “Ausfahrt” the Germany word for Exit.

We arrived in the tiny, quiet town of Grossostheim around 3pm I’d say… and immediately I had nothing else on my mind but exploration… and everyone else wanted to sleep. The “green room” was quite tempting… it was on an outdoor patio with tents and lots of inviting sofas covered in white sheets. The catered food was a traditional German variety, despite the fact that the promoters of the festival were Americans. You’d think they’d prep American food… but no. I had a giant ball of something meaty, covered in shredded beets and gravy, with a potato pancake like thing on the side, with applesauce. It was interesting. The festival turn-out was quite poor, but this was to be expected since it’s a fairly new festival, in a very small town.

After eating I decided to set out and explore.. and Grace a Jojo came along. We made it to this great stone tower thing in the middle of town, with an ancient well across from it, and then a very strange old man started shouting out to us something in German, and Jojo and Grace got understandably freaked out and we walked back to the venue. My thirst to see more of the town was eating away at me whilst I was lounging on a sofa in the green room… gazing out over the track field that was beside the gym that was the venue. I couldn’t take it anymore, got back up and started down the street into the town again by myself.

This time I made it all the way to the center, an adorable and perfect German square… complete with german style buildings and a cute little church. Smack dab in the middle, a perfect reward for my journey, was a Gelato stand. One banana, please! I said to the taken-aback small town Germans who obviously didn’t get many tourists. I issued a quick and quiet “Danke” after I realized everyone was now starring at me. I sat and ate my gelato on the square with the locals, trying very hard to blend in. Maybe it was just that I was alone that was weird? Yes… that was it.

After finishing I found a little holocaust monument beside the church… a sobering reminder of the haunted past of the country.

After returning to the venue, while we were still waiting for the show to begin, we heard that the lead singer of Bluetree was vying to sing the rap when newsboys played “Jesus Freak”… and I argued that I could also sing the rap, as I had it memorized. I sadly don’t remember the exact turn the conversation took after that - only that it ended with my friend Laurie and I deciding we would sing the rap together, and that we were starting our own rap group… her name would be “Laurie Licious” and mine “Breezy Vicious”… yes, we were all very bored. In the end Bluetree lead singer won out, and he did in fact end up performing the rap during the show. We still had a little bit of time to kill before the show started, despite it seeming like had been there all day…. oh wait…. we had been there all day. Tour life isn’t as glamous as one would think. Jody and I decided to play some ping pong. Well, let me rephrase that. I wouldn’t stop begging somebody to play with me since I was bored out of my mind, and Jody probably offered to shut me up.

It was finally time for the show to begin. It was a small crowd, not even 1/10th the size of Flevo Festival the night before… but just as fun. I love small shows just as much as big ones. Less exciting, but more personal. At Flevo I had missed the opening acts, since I had been running all over Amsterdam instead of sitting around the festival all day… so I decided to listen to Mojo w/ October Light… Mojo from the Supertone’s new band. I was pleasantly surprised… no… that’s an understatement… I was extremely excited to hear them play Supertones songs… something I’d never thought I’d get to witness again. The Supertones had long since broken up, to my dismay. But it was like that had never happened that night - rockin’ out to the greatest ska music every written (in my humble opinion) here in Germany… with a bunch of Germans… who were standing there like trees. Only trees actually moved more.

The show was awesome despite the smallness of the crowd… the Germans finally started moving a bit when the ‘boys came on. On the way back to the hotel that night we drove past a magnificent castle lit up on a hilltop. We didn’t arrive at the hotel until well after dark, however even in the pitch black you could tell we were up on a high hill, and had a spectacular view of the village and forrests beneath us. The hotel, to my delight, wasn’t a commercial hotel… it seemed more like a family owned lodge. I only hoped I had a good view… and I wasn’t disappointed at all. When I awoke in the morning I stepped out onto my private balcony, taking in the amazing sunrise over the hills. Then I was interrupted… by a phonecall from Jeff. “Hey Breezy - are you awake?” “Yes.” “Ok… just checking… you gonna be down in a few minutes?” “Um… ya….” I lied. Sort of. I hadn’t planned on being downstairs in a few minutes, but since he made it very clear that I should be for some reason (the airport shuttle wasn’t supposed to leave for another 45 minutes… I thought I had woken up early…) I decided to throw my bag together, throw on some clothes and get downstairs. Good thing I did - turns out that somehow, despite double-checking, I had got the time wrong, and I was actually 10 minutes late. Thank God I had woken up “early”… hahah…

The guys forgave me and we were off to Frankfurt International Airport. To go home. Not everyone, mind you… many were staying behind to take a train to Paris for a few days vacation. Jeff, Jeff, Duncan and Johnny O were all traveling home, like me. The ride down on the Autobahn to the airport was a sad one, despite a funny conversation about how Jeff and I thought the Autobahn was actually a certain road in particular, not the entire freeway system in Germany.

After pushing all the carts of road cases through the airport and an uneventful check-in (this is not always the case, I’ve been told, since airport security, especially international, are sometimes not friendly to bands… they all hold their breath in anticipation for a problem) we were off on our way back home. It was a direct flight from Frankfurt to Atlanta, which I found a little strange. It seemed weird to me that was even possible. To travel directly between two places so incredibly different, and far from each other. That distance became even farther than I originally imagined, when to avoid bad weather in the Atlantic the plane was routed even further north - all the way over Iceland and Greenland. I had my head glued the the window, trying to spot the land masses. The flight was 13 hours. Apparently Duncan watched 5 movies in a row. Let that sink in. I watched 3, and that was too many for me. After what felt like an eternity, we landed safely in Atlanta… only to wait an hour more to board a puddle jumper to Nashville. We all ate at Houllihan’s, except for Duncan… who had headed for a lounge to relax. The food was very noticably un-european, which made me sad.

Eating made things a little better temporarily - but when we landed in Nashville I was totally dead. 18 hours of non-stop travel had taken it’s toll. Thank God Breeon drived me home, I would have been a safety hazard driving myself home in that condition. After another 30 minutes I made it safe and sound to my house, after my second journey to Europe in only two months.

——

Back on the bus we drove off the ferry, drove across the bridge, and started on our way to our final destination on the tour: Roma! Although the drive was quite long, it wasn’t as long as I expected it to be. We stopped at another Aggrip gas station/rest stop after Fritz woke everyone up… and we ate at Ciao again. Not amazing but not bad. Definitely fast food quality. Ally and I ate alone this time, and intensely planned what we were going to do in Rome from maps and brochures.

Upon arriving in the outskirts of Rome I woke Ally up and said “we’re in Rome! When in Rome! When in Rome!” I know, I’m so annoying. I’m not sorry. It is so fun to say “when in Rome” when you’re actually in Rome. You have no idea. Or maybe you do. Ally was pissed off and said “this isn’t Rome.” Right then we passed a car junkyard that Jelle proceeded to tell this joke about: “My friend always says that’s not a junkyard, but the woman’s parking lot” Ally fell back asleep. I don’t blame her. The outskirts of Rome aren’t very impressive. It’s hard to see the epicenter of Rome from the outskirts, there aren’t any skyscrapers or distinguishing tall landmarks like the Eiffel Tower in Paris or the Eye in London.

Upon arriving at our hotel, the Prime Area Hotel (what kind of name is that for a hotel?) which was very ironically named because it was nowhere near the “prime area” of Rome. More like the ghetto. The hotel itself was very nice, but it was in a very shady part of town that the cabbies couldn’t even find with detailed directions. Another lobby with beautiful mod white furniture and flat screen TVs… but no internet in the rooms. Just the lobby! When we got in the elevator to go up to our room, 208, we shared it with Mohammed’s mom, who was so sweet but couldn’t speak English. It’s funny how easily humor transcends language boundaries though, because when I went to push the button for floor 2, I got very confused by the number pad the elevator had because it was vertical instead of horizontal, and the numbers were placed in a very odd way on the buttons with weird stripe designs all over them. It still couldn’t find the button for two, and finally Mohammed’s mom held up two fingers and started laughing at me, followed by Ally laughing and calling me an idiot and pressing 2 for me.

When we got in our room we were pleasantly surprised how nice it was… marble tiled bathroom, huge leather floor to ceiling headboard on a beautiful, super comfy king sized bed with a flat screen TV. Even in what was a very nice hotel, the shower was so small I was banging my elbows on the walls again!

We didn’t stay in the hotel long before we had a bus call to do our included excursion of Rome.

First we got dropped off near the Spanish Steps, which I must admit I knew nothing about before the tour, despite them apparently being one of the most famous landmarks in Rome. They are quite beautiful and humongous… I was very thankful we only had to walk down them and not back up. At the base of the steps there was a mob of people sitting on them, and a cute fountain that people were filling up their water bottles in. All the fountains in Rome, big and small, have safe drinkable water flowing out of them.

We followed the road past the Spanish Steps down a ways before coming across the magnificent Trevi Fountain. Much larger than I expected, it looks more like a huge swimming pool with fountains flowing into it than a fountain. Ally did the honors of throwing coins in the fountain, while I video taped. All around Rome we spotted recently married couples getting wedding portraits taken, but my favorite was here at the fountain… a gorgeous Italian couple were getting their portraits done by a very professional looking photographer, and along with many other tourists I snuck a few shots of them. Thankfully they didn’t seem to mind at all. What else can you expect getting your portraits done at one of the world’s biggest tourist attractions?

Next up on the walking tour was Hadrian’s Temple, which looks so archaic and beat-up you wonder how on earth it survived so long. It’s pocket-marked all over not because of war or decay, but because over the years the metal serving as structural support between the stone and the stone itself had been removed to be re-used… the same reason the Colosseum is in ruins. Earthquakes and wars contributed slightly, but these structures would be in much better shape if not for neglect and recycling of their marble and metal. Hadrian’s Temple was remarkable to behold… simply knowing you are in the shadow of a building that’s been standing since the year 145 is incredible.

Next on the tour we walked through a restaurant and shop filled alleyway and came out into a huge square - Piazza della Rotonda, home of the Pantheon. I had to take a deep breath and just stand in awe for a few moments at this one. Having studied the Pantheon and it’s brilliant dome and oculus in Professor Zaho’s Art History class, I felt like I had stepped into my text book yet again. I wanted so badly to go inside and behold the marvelous oculus, alas it had just closed to visitors about a half hour before. Another thing to do next time!

Moving swiftly along we passed through another alleyway filled with shops and restaurants… by this time knowing full well around every corner we would step into another fantastic square with something else to marvel at. The next one didn’t disappoint – it was Piazza Navona, home of the Four Rivers sculpture/fountain and the something Palace. Our local guide told us the history of the fountain, and how each of the four rivers and four men represented the 4 continents (back when they thought there were only four)… as she was speaking I walked all around the fountain taking pictures… then I scooped up some water from the fountain and splashed it on my face… quite refreshing and clean! Our guide then announced we were free for an hour to eat before the our bus call to take us back to the hotel.

To Ally’s delight just a stone’s throw away from the fountain was a restaurant on the square that she had wanted to eat at (she researched a few of the best restaurants in Rome before we came and it just so happened to be one of them) The place was called Tre Scalini and like all the other restaurants in Rome most of the seating was outside on the square, with a picturesque view of the fountain and the twilight sky sourrounding it.

Our waiter was absolutely adorable and very funny. I ordered the Fettucini Alfredo. It was the most delicious Fettucini Alfredo I’d had since the first and only other time I had it at an authentic Italian restaurant in ‘Italy’ at Epcot. It’s a shame that Olive Garden, Maccaroni Grill, Maggiano’s and all those other American Italian chains can’t get Fettucini Alfredo down. After having the first entree in Italy that lived up to (and exceeded) the hype of authentic Italian cuisine it was time to order desert… what else but some chocolate gelato? Around this time we realized that we had only 5 minutes until we had to be at our bus, yet we had just ordered our desert! Since we were in a very convenient location on the square it just so happened Jelle walked right past us on his way back to the bus… and we told him we weren’t going to make it and we’d find our way back. This made our desert much more enjoyable knowing we didn’t have to cram it down our throats. We took our precious time finishing up our first dinner in Rome, and by the time we were done night had set over the square in a lovely shade of cobalt blue. The fountains and shops were all illuminated and bathed the square in a lovely warm light…

We paid for our dinner and parted ways with our fantastic waiter and strolled through the artists and merchants throughout the square to a toy shop at the opposite end. It was like stepping into a weird, small FAO Schwartz. The shop had a spiral staircase to a second floor overflowing with stuffed animals… the bottom floor had a few life size knomes and horses you could sit on or pose to take pictures with… not to mention a lovely collection of toy cars, mostly Italian sports cars. We bought a few gifts for our brothers and then we were on our way.

Since we had missed the bus we decided to trace our steps back through the city and eventually catch a taxi back to the hotel. We passed by the Pantheon and the Trevi Fountain and night, both of which have a completely different look lit up at night. We finally came up on a street corner with lots of cabs, but before grabbing one we decided to stop in a cute little gelateria Ally spotted. As if we hadn’t had enough gelato, Craig and Ally both ordered more. I was just too full. The gelateria was owned by a wonderful man named Valentino, who guaranteed us it would be the best gelato we had ever tasted. He was so passionate about his gelato and was such a delightful man… we stayed and talked to him a few minutes about where we were from and he showed us some awesome old pictures he had on the walls of his shop. Ally and Craig both agreed it was the best gelato ever.

After Ally and Craig finished the gelato we finally got in a cab and headed back to the hotel, and upon turning a street corner a few minutes into the drive we saw something coming up in the distance we all started screaming like little girls about - the colosseum! Up until this point we still hadn’t driven past it or seen it, and here it was! We were about to drive right past it, and our nice cab driver drove nice and slow after realizing our excitement about seeing it. It’s partially lit up at night and is apparently still open, because they’re were crowds of people still gathered around it.

Upon waking up the next morning we grabbed some food in the lobby and made our way to the bus for our final full day on the tour. Our first stop: the Vatican. Francesco gracefully took our huge bus through the winding crazy streets of Rome until we came to the fortified entrance to the tiny country, which doubled as the entrance to the Vatican museum. There was a humongous line to get in, but as usual, we skipped the lines and got right in with the tour. I almost felt bad for the people in line.

After going through the metal detectors and all that fun stuff, we had entered our 6th country of the trip! Our local guide took us through corridor after corridor of ancient treasures, each hallway more ornate and glittering than the last - the walls and ceilings were just as or more impressive than the artifacts and art being displayed on them. Some of the highlights were the finest and best preserved middle ages tapestries, and ancient maps of Italy. After what seemed like a mile of walking through the museum, we came upon the Sistine Chapel. You walk through this relatively tiny door/ staircase and come into the ethereal space that’s covered in the greatest art ever produced. The room is abuzz with about 100 people all gapping and gawking at the art encompassing them, but since it’s a chapel the guards like to keep it quiet for prayer. So about once every 2 or 3 minutes all the guards would issue a loud SHHHHHHHhhhhhh… and the volume of the room would drop to a whisper, only to gradually rise back up again to conversation volume… and this cycle occurred about 10 times while I was in there.

Even though you weren’t technically allowed to take pictures or video, this didn’t really stop anyone. The guards were fairly strict if they caught you, but they were very outnumbered and it was still very easy to get pictures without them noticing. I simply kneeled down in the crowd of people so my camera would be invisible while I took dozens of photos and videos.

Eventually we had to leave, but it wasn’t too sad since the next stop was St. Peter’s Basilica. My brain was already on overload but it was pushed over the edge here. I took about 150 photos in the 10 minutes we were in there. The Pieta is housed inside, as well as almost all the pope’s tombs and countless works of art and beautiful things to stare at. You could spend a day in this building and still not see all of it. We took a tour all the way around the central alter, and as we were leaving a choir started to sing and a mass procession began down the aisle.

Next we made our way out to St. Peter’s Square. They were setting up for something and thousands of chairs were placed in front of St. Peter’s. We hung out for a while in front of the church, waiting for a few of our tour mates. We were then given some free time to get some food or roam about the Vatican & Rome… so we hopped across the border back into Italy, which was just across the street, and ate some pizza or something at a little cafe. Then we went in the Vatican gift shop and bought a rosary for my mom, which is then blessed by the pope and delivered to your hotel later that night.

Then we headed off to the Colosseum! We parked well above it on a hill and got a nice view of it, and then had a fun little walk to get there. Upon arrival we got in very quickly, as usual, and took an elevator to the top to work our way down. Our local guide told us the history of the place… but I had long since zoned out and was meditating in the thoughts and emotions of this crazy building… where the first Christians had been thrown to the lions for sport. Where gladiators battled for freedom. Where mock naval battles had been staged by filling the arena with water. We slowly made our way down level by level, and plotted our upcoming free time with our tour friends.

Next we decided to head over to the ruins of ancient rome across the street. I grabbed some gelato along the way, which was delicious and refreshing in the very hot Roman sun. It was a long and sometimes steep climb to the top of the hill where the ruins were, but we made it… and surveyed the remains of the city that literally laid the foundation for modern city life as we know it.

Some areas of the city were in such good shape, you could imagine ancient Romans still living there… it felt a little spooky, since these ruins are essentially an ancient ghost town. There are no guards, no people patrolling and no guides through it… and it was surprisingly deserted up there. I walked around the corners a few times by myself, wondering what I’d find…

After a half hour or so in ancient Rome, we headed back down the hill, sweaty as can be, and had the option to go back to go back to the hotel to freshen up for dinner, but as usual, we didn’t take it. We decided to take the few hours we had off to try and find Vespas to rent. Emphasis on the word TRY. We ended up convincing our friends Chanel and Rob to come with and we trekked what seemed like miles through the city trying to hunt down a Vespa rental shop. When we finally found it, they wanted an obscene amount of money for 3 hours when we only wanted to rent the Vespas for one hour. We made the smart but unfortunate decision to not rent them, and went a few blocks down the street to a “Mackers” to drown our sorrows in Big Macs and fries. Yes, we ate at McDonald’s on our last day in Europe. And I don’t regret it at all. Finally we caught a cab back to the hotel (not surprisingly, our cab driver got lost trying to find it).

We then returned to a restaurant on the other side of the Colosseum for our farewell dinner, with a view of the sun setting behind the massive ruins. Dinner was strange but delicious, a more traditional Italian meal that I had never had before. We spent a lot of quality time with our tour mates, and one of the Aussie families gave us all little Koala bears. We reflected on all the awesome things we had done in the trip, said our farewells and took pictures together, then boarded the bus and headed back to our hotel.

The next morning was a very sad one. Only a few people were actually flying home from Rome that day, most everyone else was spending another day there or continuing on to other European destinations. We traveled to the airport with only Val, Pam, Jelle and Francesco.

At Fumiccino/ Leonardo Da Vinci Airport (the airport in Rome has two official names) Ally and I had some time to kill and Euros to spend, so I bought my only souvenir of the whole trip - a Ferrari pen - and Ally bought some cool stationary stuff and a tiny little pen (we like pens I guess?!) and then we waited, and waited, for our flight to London.

Upon arrival in back in London we got a killer view of the city from the air, and the sky was clear almost the whole flight so I also got a good view of the Alps as well, and pretty much our entire route that took two weeks by land I got the see again by air in just a few hours.

To save money on our flights Ally and I had to schedule our return flight to include a stay overnight at LaGuardia in NYC… little did we know that they don’t let you pass through security back into the terminal until just 3 hours before your flight, and our flight was 9 hours from then. We had planned to simply sleep on the floor at the gate, but this destroyed that plan and rendered us homeless in NYC for the night. Needless to say we had no other option than to find a hotel, so we waited in the hour long taxi line and stayed in one of LaGuardia’s “airport hotels” which was actually 15 minutes away in the ghetto of Queens. We checked into the hotel at 1:00am, and we found out we had to get the 5:00 shuttle back to the airport if we wanted to play it safe to catch our flights. The woman who checked us into the room checked us out 4 hours later with a puzzled look on her face.

After two weeks of travel, six new countries and lots of new stories and adventures under my belt, I made it safely back to Nashville (and Ally back to Orlando) at 9am, and was picked up by my coworker and driven straight to work. Good thing I love my job.

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It seemed like it took forever to get to Venice. But we finally arrived sometime around 3pm. When you first get there it’s not at all what you would expect, because the mainland before you cross the bridge to the island is completely industrial and unattractive. It’s not until you’re across the bridge and on the main island that it starts looking like the breathtaking city it is.

After we crossed the bridge we walked a short distance to a water taxi dock, where we separated into groups of about 10 on the taxi boats that would take us though the grand canal to St. Mark’s Square.

Ally and I shared a water taxi with Rob & Chanel, our Aussie friends, Steve & Lynn, our American friends, Val & Pam, our Canadian friends, and Jelle. That water taxi ride was one of my favorite things we did on the entire tour. We had a lot of fun talking and joking around and taking in the magic of the grand canal of Venice… every building, every bridge, every pole sticking out of the water with it’s colorful swirly painted design… the gondolas gliding past you, the salty wind whipping through your hair… I never wanted it to stop. Boating is one of my favorite activities as it is… and Venice is heaven for boaters.

After our arrival at the dock we walked to the Doches Palace which is at the entrance to St. Mark’s Square. I said to Ally when we got there how it felt like were at Epcot… since the replica buildings in Epcot’s Italy are the Doches Palace and St. Mark’s Campanile (if you don’t know what Epcot is, it’s a theme park in Orlando where there are different “countries” situated around a lake that have replicas of famous landmarks, authentic food and even people from those countries working there) I always thought when walking through Epcot how ironic it would be seeing the REAL landmarks since I had seen such authentic replicas growing up thanks to the magic of Disney. Thankfully the feeling wore off quickly as even the best replicas can’t give off the wonder you feel standing in the shadow of the real gems of the old world.

On a side-note, St. Mark’s Square is often flooded, but I was delighted to discover when we got there that it was totally dry. The water level was actually very low in the city the days we were there, and the square was bustling with people and pigeons.

At this point we were given some free time, so Ally and I started wandering around the Square and got lost wandering through the maze of shops that surround it. We eventually found our way back toward the Square and past the Gondola docks and Hard Rock Venice before meeting back up with Jelle and the gang for our Gondola ride.

Another one of my favorite activities on the tour, the gondola ride was everything it was cracked up to be. We got to share one with our Singaporean friends, and all of the rest of our tour peeps were either in front of us or behind us on other gondolas, as we snaked through the crazy smaller canals with a singer/accordion player in the gondola in front of us performing famous Italian love songs. Once we got out into the grand canal, the singer posed for my camera and I got one of my favorite pictures from our trip:

He then proceeded to sing Volare, which everyone sang along with and thoroughly enjoyed. I was lucky enough to grab a video of it, which I’ll post later =)

After our amazing gondola ride, we headed back to the water taxis to be taken to our hotel on Lido Island, the outer barrier island of Venice. The water taxi ride was quite enjoyable and the views of the lagoon are wonderful… and I must say, if not for the vintage buildings on the shore, the lagoon was quite similar to the Intercoastal Waterway where I grew up in Clearwater. There were a few moments I felt like I was back home in Florida, cruising through the islands and channel markers.

When we arrived at Lido, trusty Francesco was waiting with our bus to bring us to the hotels. We first dropped off the Spotlight crew at their more expensive hotel, then drove to our hotel which we were dreading would be bad… but it ended up being my favorite on the tour. The Ca Del Moro Hotel was built in little buildings of about 20 rooms each, and the rooms were extremely modern and new with great furniture and a nice beach like atmosphere. The hotel had a pool and tennis courts and a nice restaurant which we ate at both nights. The only draw back was the “beach” –which I’ll get to later.

After freshening up a bit we all walked together to the restaurant, which we knew must be OK because Jelle was joining us. The place was extremely modern, like the rest of the hotel, which is sort of strange in Venice. It was expected in Switzerland but not Italy. The floors were a shiny white tile and all the furniture was white with colorful napkins and modern paintings on the walls. Our waiter didn’t speak english very well but was very nice. He was wearing a black graphic t-shirt and jeans and had a cast on one arm… I don’t know why I remember him so vividly, but maybe it was because he was our waiter both nights there.

Our first dish was a pasta, of course, and the main course was chicken something and vegetables. Pretty tasty but I wasn’t amazed. It wouldn’t be until Rome that I had Italian food worthy of the reputation. The food quality always made for extremely entertaining conversation with our tour friends. I won’t say who but a few people always got slightly drunk– we always got at least the first glass of wine included, which didn’t help. Conversations got quite entertaining by the end of meals. Favorite topics were our respective countries, culture, and of course, accents. It was good fun hearing the Aussies try and speak with an American accent and apparently hearing us speak with an Aussie accent was amusing as well. I told Craig that whenever he said he was “knackered” (which means tired in Aussie speak) with his thick accent it sounded like nekkid… which is of course slang for naked here in the states. Accents are a funny thing.

Some of the slang we learned on the tour and in our discussion at dinner in Venice are “Good on ya, mate!” which means good for you, Knackered, pronounced “neck-id” which means tired. Pissed means drunk… and when an Aussie says “it’s your shout” they aren’t telling you you’re cool, they’re telling you you’re paying for the next round of drinks. Oh and forget McDonald’s. It’s Mackers. “Heaps” is what they say in place of “lots” and most importantly, if you want to sound Australian, NEVER pronounce the “er” at the end of anything. The “er” sound becomes “ah”.

After dinner we all started back toward our hotel when we decided we should go to the beach instead. After all it was supposedly just a short walk. So we walked over to Jelle and Francesco’s table and Rob asked Jelle the quickest route to the beach… he gave us the directions and we were off!

A few mozzie bites and funny conversations later we found the “beach”… a ton of boulders and rocks and a nice retention wall that abutted the Adriatic sea. Everyone else was just like “ah, whatever, oh well…” but since Craig had a bit more to drink I think his ability to let it go had diminished and he decided when we walked back he would give Jelle a piece of his mind about this so called beach and the lack of any such thing.

We made our way back through the dark roads and sidewalks onto the hotel property where we found Jelle and Francesco still sitting by the pool bar. Craig storms up to Jelle and says “that’s not a beach mate! you said there was a beach! That was a heap of rocks!” Jelle says “ah I never said it was a nice beach, I just said it was a beach… you just climb over the rocks, ya?” then Chanel chimed in and said “climb over the rocks? are you crazy? You’d drown!” this conversation about whether or not you could actually call it a beach or not came to a close with the conclusion that if you walk down the shore a ways, you do eventually come to a real beach… on a side note, is there anything funnier than watching drunk people fight? No, I think not…

After having a few more laughs by the pool and being bitten alive by the mozzies we all went back to our rooms. Ally went back out to the lobby to get online (they only have internet for a fee in hotel lobbies throughout most of Europe) and I took a shower and then joined Ally in the lobby a bit later. She only had 20 minutes left of internet, so she gave it to me to use while she went back to the room.

After 20 minutes of facebooking and flickring and checking my email I packed up and went back to the room, knocked lightly… and there was no answer. So I knocked a little louder. No answer. I couldn’t knock any louder because I didn’t want to wake any of our tour peeps up… in any other hotel circumstance I would have said screw it and wouldn’t have cared about waking up the people in adjoining rooms, but since I knew these people and would have to face them the rest of the trip haven woken them up in the middle of the night, I feared knocking any louder. Starting to panic I ran around the other side of the room to the back porch outside (we were on the ground level thankfully) and since there was no door in the fence around the porch (stupid security thing I suppose) I had to jump a 5ft fence with a 3ft high bush around it in a skirt and flip-flops… knocked on the sliding glass door… no answer. Then I ran back to the lobby… closed. Dude locked it up right after I left. Went back the main room door and knocked for about 5 more minutes… at this point trying to decide the least embarrassing place for me to sleep that night… would it look like I passed out of drunkeness if I was found sleeping right outside my door? Should I find a place to sleep outside, hidden, and hope I woke up in time in the morning to get cleaned up?

Finally, Ally opens the door. I do not have a happy look on my face. She says “What? Why do you look like you wanna kill me?” I tell her what happened. Moral of the story… always, always get your own room key. Never share one. The other person might fall asleep and lock you out when the front desk is closed and render you homeless for the night. OK so this was a pretty rare sequence of events that caused this (what kind of hotel doesn’t have 24hr desk service?) but still.

The next morning we headed out bright and early on the water taxis to the main island for a glass blowing workshop. I have to admit I wasn’t all that excited about it, but I wasn’t excited about the perfumery either and that ended up being awesome. We had to walk through all kinds of crazy streets and across bridges over tiny canals to get to the place which was really fun. When you walk in you pass by this crazy huge green glass horse and a huge gift shop with all kinds of glass souvenirs. When you start the tour they take you up a staircase to a tiny little demonstration room where you sit around this huge furnace. In walked the most macho bad-ass looking italian man I had seen thus far, and I’m thinking he’s like the glass blowers body guard or something. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a scarier looking man. But then scary italian man picks up a long pole, puts it in the furnace and starts blowing a beautiful vase out of a glowing orange blob of glass at the end of the pole and in about 1 minute flat the finished piece is done. A perfect little vase with handles. That he then threw back in the fire. The guy narrating the whole thing said something like there are only a few master glass blowers in the world and it takes 20 years to perfect the craft, and that scary italian dude was one of the best and what he makes in these demonstrations is just for fun which is why he destroys them at the end.

Then they herded us into the gift shop, just like rides at theme parks do. Only thing is at least rides at theme parks have gifts that are under $100. Not this place. They were trying to sell us a €2,000 glass tea set and etched glass tray… no thanks. The cheapest stuff we found Ally ended up buying… €15 Christmas ornaments… I guess on sale since it wasn’t Christmas.

After the glass blowing workshop we had some free time before our excursion through the lagoon to Burano. Ally and I walked around St. Mark’s Square a bit, crossed over one of the biggest bridges over the main canal, got some fresh strawberries in a cup and ate them while sitting on the bridge… then wandered back over to St. Mark’s Square and sat down and listened to a band playing lovely classical music at a cafe. We were tipped off by Jelle not to actually sit in the chairs in these cafe’s as they will charge you a €20 fee just for sitting down, claiming you’re paying for the entertainment. So we sat on the ground against the steps, which led to me falling asleep for a bit. It was quite nice falling asleep to the lovely music of Venice.

Our free time was running out so we made our way back to the water taxi dock, making sure to cross 4 bridges on the way as Jelle instructed. We got back with plenty of time to spare so we wandered a bit further to where we were told was a less touristy, more locals only part of Venice. We found a very peaceful square that felt far removed from the hustle and bustle of St. Mark’s Square. Just a couple locals wandering around, sitting on the benches and retrieving water out of the fountain in the center.

After relaxing in the square we found Jelle sitting at a little cafe by our water taxi and we joined him and a few of our Aussie friends, namely “uncle” Gary, and Jelle and I started talking about my camera, which he liked a lot. Many people do. He asked if I would show him how to use it later and if he could buy it off me, then took a few pictures with it. You’d think he’d see a lot of nice cameras being a tour director but I guess I have a pretty special one =)

At last it was time for us to head over to Burano for lunch. The small fisherman’s island of Burano is famous for it’s multicolored buildings. While all of Venice has multicolored buildings, none are quite as vibrant and unique as the ones you find on Burano. Not only is every house an extremely bright and unique color, but Jelle explained that each color actually represents the family. So if two houses are the same color, that means they are from the same family. Paint suppliers must make a killing on his island because I didn’t see a single house that didn’t have an extremely fresh and new coat of colorful paint.

The place we ate at in Burano was a seafood place (it was after all a fisherman’s island) but Ally and I don’t eat fish which posed a bit of a challenge. We had a lot of pasta and some chicken instead, which isn’t exactly my favorite, but hey, that’s the awesome part of traveling. You gotta eat what the locals eat and if you don’t like it - well, it’s still a great experience!

After wandering across the entire island (it wasn’t very big) and it’s canals, we dodged into a cool church to avoid the heat and relaxed and prayed a bit inside of it. Even on this tiny little island the church could have been called a mini-cathedral it was so ornate and beautiful.

After a while we moved outside and sat under the shade of a building talking to John and Susan, two more of our Aussie friends. They were continuing on to Malta after our tour, where John is originally from, and so we talked about Malta a lot and how Count of Monte Cristo was filmed there (one of Ally and I’s favorite movies) Susan was a lot of fun to talk to because she had an excellent Aussie sense of humor.

After our Burano cruise we boated back to St. Mark’s Square again to pick up anyone who hadn’t gone to Burano, and we passed a huge sailboat/yacht again that we had passed by earlier and wondered the price of. Jelle had actually asked around between the boat captains and they found out it was owned by a wealthy American businessman and the estimated cost was around €100 million which is about $150 million. For a boat.

I ended up googling the sailboat when I got home (I liked it a lot) and as it turns out, it’s the second largest sailing yacht in the world, and the most modern. It’s called the Maltese Falcon and it was built/owned by Tom Perkins (HP). The entire boat, including the sails, are operated by computer, and the sail system is a futuristic, breakthrough square rig.

After docking back at St. Mark’s Square we ended up picking up another Trafalgar tour group and another tour guide for our trip back to Lido Island, which was interesting. It’s funny seeing people who are technically on the same tour as you but who you haven’t been traveling with… you think wow.. those people are who I could have been traveling with instead of my group! And you start judging whether or not they look better or nicer than your group. We decided of course that our group was the best =) On our taxi ride Jelle snapped this picture of Ally and I in the Venetian Lagoon:

When we arrived at Lido Island we had a little bit of relaxation time before dinner, so many people went swimming but Ally and I decided to stay in the room and relax for an hour… I think the ONLY time on the trip we chose to do so! After we changed and wandered out to the restaurant… down past the tennis courts and playground… and found a seat at a table by a flatscreen TV that had the Italy vs. Brazil football game on, which was apparently a huge and important game (that Italy lost). We were joined by Chanel and Rob for the meal, and later Craig and Francesco joined our table to watch the game.

During lunch at Burano Jelle had asked me to bring my photo gear and laptop to dinner so we could talk photography after, so I finished up and joined Jelle at his table. He offered to buy my camera many times and wanted to know about Lightroom and my editing process since he travels so much and wants to take better pictures of all the amazing sights he sees. I am extremely jealous of his job I must say.

After our conversation Ally and I walked back to the lobby to get on the internet again (yes, we are addicted) and we were joined by Nikki, our Singaporean friend who was on the tour with her parents. Her mom was possibly the sweetest woman I’ve ever met in my entire life and at the end of the tour told Ally and I we needed to visit them in Singapore, an offer I would LOVE to take them up on one day. Nikki I think is 17 but very mature for her age, and we had a really fun conversation with her about Singapore and the differences in culture to America. One thing I found funny is she was shocked we can get our driver’s permit at 15 in America. It’s like 20 something in Singapore.

When we first got there we noticed a dude sitting on the corner of one of the super modern white sofas in the lobby of our hotel, on a mac, typing away. After a few minutes of talking with Nikki, he started chiming in on our conversation and before long we were talking up a storm with him. His name was John and he was actually from Manchester, England but was in Venice for something school related. I told him if I had to guess where he was from by his accent I’d say Scotland to which he started making fun of Scottish accents trying to prove how he didn’t sound Scottish at all. We had a really fun conversation ranging from everything to the cars he drives (American cars) to politics (which we surprisingly agreed on). Nikki and Ally and I all agreed later that he had an amazing accent. Way thicker than the accents we heard in London.

The next day Ally and I had to wake up super early for our ferry ride back to the main island, because this time we had to take the ferry that could hold the bus… and the locals lined up very early for this ferry, so we had to make sure we didn’t get bumped to the next one which wasn’t for another few hours. Since tours are booked extremely tight this would royally screw us over since we’d be stuck on an island for hours with nowhere to go, so Jelle was super careful we were all on time to the bus that morning. We had been OK waking up for the early calls up until this day… but we must have been so tired from the late night in the lobby talking to Nikki and John that we missed the wake-up call this morning. Thankfully our alarms did end up waking us up, but only with about 10 minutes to spare to get to the bus. Since we missed the bag call, Jelle actually came and knocked on our door which about gave me a heart attack, and even though we were already awake, Jelle made fun of us later saying he woke us up. That morning all I had for breakfast was one lousy croissant, and I dressed so hastily that I forgot how hot Rome was going to be and dressed in black jeans and a black t-shirt. Brilliant.

Well we ended up making it in plenty of time for the ferry, and since there was a waiting line for the bus we all just got off of it and walked around the dock for a bit before boarding. We caught up with Chanel and Rob with all they did the day before (they didn’t join us in Burano) and we had more funny conversations about accents… this time I did an Aussie accent for them and said G’day mate! They said it wasn’t bad!

Aboard the ferry we stood in the front with the morning breeze of Venice blowing through our hair, the last time we would ride through the lagoon and the grand canal… at least for a long time anyway.