Day 18 - Venice, Italy - June 20

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We slept today until 10, as late as we could because of checkout, to catch up on the lost sleep from the adventure last night. We found a cool place the previous day that sold large cups of fruit so we decided to eat this, along with gelato, as our breakfast. With fruit in hand, we wandered around the streets of Venice watching all the people and listening to all the commotion around us, quite enjoyable. We also found a great cafe by the water overlooking an island of Venice that served up an assortment of sandwiches for a very reasonable price. After relaxing by the water, we took a taxi ride around Venice again, this time sitting in the open-air seats in the front of the boat. After an hour ride through all parts of Venice, we picked up our bags and went to the train station to leave for Florence. It was unfortunate that we lost our reservation for the train in all the rush getting to Venice. Therefore, we had to buy another reservation for €22. We arrived Florence after a 2 and a half hour train ride to find that our hotel was a 5 minute walk from the station; a nice change to all of the other cross-town adventures that we've had to endure. The hotel turned out to be excellent with air conditioning, a gracious owner, and ideal location. We bought a bottle of wine and sat out at a nearby park to take in Florence. After the park, we found a cool pizza place to grab some dinner where we sat next to a group from Australia. We then went back to our place to get some sleep to explore what Florence has to offer tomorrow.