Back from Europe - Part 1

We made it back from Europe late Sunday night. The trip was fantastic, of course, and I look forward to returning to Paris sometime in the future. Everyone in both Paris and Venice were delightful. We were as careful as we could be in being polite and I think that helped our experience.

Along with a great trip we had the typically crazy stuff happen and then when we returned we had even more stuff go on. Here's a quick rundown:

I broke my camera while on vacation. I don't know how it happened exactly. I hung the camera on a door handle in a bathroom stall. The handle was very stable, but the next thing I know my camera was bouncing on the tile floor. The thing might've survived but I had the lens out at the time. I'll take it to a shop sometime in the future to see if I can get it fixed for a reasonable price, though its doubtful. So we ended paying about 300.00 dollars for a camera that retails in the states for 133.00. Bummer. So, the verdict is I either bumped the camera as I was taking off my jacket in the bathroom (they are very nice bathrooms in Europe, but they are a bit smaller than here) or someone came along and wiggled the door handle to see if it was a vacant stall, which would've caused the handle to dip and my camera strap to slide.

We missed a bus. The bus would've taken us to our airport connection to go to Venice. We were at the bus station 2 hours and 45 minutes before our flight, but that wasn't good enough. We needed to bet there 30 minutes before that. So we had to take a cab because there weren't anymore buses leaving for hours. The cab cost us 160.00 dollars.

Jimmy placed a call to the states. He didn't check the rates before he connected. We're happy was only able to leave a voice mail because later he tried calling again and had the presence of mind to check the rates before dialing... Turns out the 30 second message probably cost about 23.00 dollars.

I'll write more tomorrow about our mishaps. The next ones are all about what happened once we got back to the states.