And so the cruise begins. After going through the check in process yesterday and exploring Venice with my family it was on to our first full day of the cruise. The cruise ship stayed in Venice overnight and departed today at 2PM but we had to be on board by noon. My parents with Amy and Ally left to go back into Venice for a few hours while Jenn and I slept and Jake worked out.

When we planned this years Europe 2012 adventure it was broken into three parts. Switzerland, Venice, and then the cruise. Today marked the completion of part two of our journey and the beginning of the longest portion of our travel, the cruise. This morning we woke up at around 7:30AM but laid around in bed until 9:30. We finished up packing, checked for any loose items, I finished up my entry for yesterday, and we went down to breakfast at around 10:30AM.

Jenn and I love getting in a routine while on vacation. It usually takes a few days but we have been in an incredible routine while in Venice. Sleep in, go into town have lunch, walk around, have some lunch and some wine, go back to the hotel rest, go back out for dinner and some more wine, eat some gelato, walk around some more and call it a day. Sounds like a beautiful thing to me and today once again follows that pattern.

It's so great to be back in Italy. Yesterday was our first full day in Venice and it was a great start to our time here. Today was the first day of the trip where Jenn and I actually slept in until 9:30AM, which felt great and made us even more prepared for the day.

We headed into Venice at noon and took our hotels boat transportation to take us across the canal to the mainland of Venice. We really didn't have any major plans for the day so we decided to look for the cruise port to see where we would be starting our cruise on Monday. Visually it seems pretty easy to find things in Venice but once you start going through various alleyways and and bridges it's almost impossible not to get lost. Needless to say we got lost and it took at least an hour to find the port and when we did we were exhausted.

What a great way to start off our time here last night with a great dinner and time walking around Venice. We woke up this morning at around 8AM and started to get ready for our first full day in Venice. Did I mention it's hot here? Well it is and so we tried our best to dress appropriately but it doesn't matter what you wear as the heat will still get you.

It's always a great sign for a trip when your sad to leave a place. Waking up this morning was tough for many reasons but mainly we were both sad to be leaving the beauty of Switzerland. The good news is we aren't done with the European adventure yet, in fact we are not even close. The trip is just getting started.