Start of the great adventure

So I'd love to report all sunshine and roses, but that just isn't the truth.  Nevertheless we have had fun. The kids have been real troopers hiking up steep hills, sometimes multiple times (because we don't know where we are and have to go back down for directions.) We started in Venice and it rained the whole time. The last day there we finally bought an umbrella.  There are only 4-5 times per year the water is so high they have to use the platforms to walk through parts of town and we were there during one of these times.  We saw 2 guys carrying sheets of drywall through the streets with plastic over the drywall, each of them in knee high rain boots, in 6-8 inches of water carrying umbrellas. Pretty funny to us because we weren't used to it. The kids have had the most fun chasing birds, feeding the birds, watching the dogs (there was not a dog in Venice without a raincoat), and looking at boats. We thought it was fun to ride the water bus' at first but after a while they lost their excitement.  I think we all really liked Murano, where we stepped into a shop to ask for directions to a glass factory and they invited us into their back room where there were two guys making glass.  It was a welcome sight-this hot industrial room filled with tools and hatch doors for furnaces. It had been raining and it was nice to dry out a bit and see some beautiful art being made.  We've been eating so much bread--it's so good! In Italy we ate cheese everyday with our bread.  We are now in Croatia.  Some differences between the 2 countries...Italy had hot water, hot showers, big towels, noisy streets, dog poop everywhere,  and incredible pizza. Croatia has nice people, towels big enough to dry your hands, dog poop all over the sidewalks, limited heated rooms and 1 hour of hot water to shower.  So it's fine, just some new things.  I guess we are just spoiled.  Language is a bit of a challenge because Croatian is not similar to English or any language with latin roots, where Italian was fairly easy to figure out even though we didn't know it. Many young Croatians know English so we are not getting into trouble. The past few days have be een sunny and we have been to parks and picking flowers and collecting rocks and pinecones.
Everyone is good, we have runny noses but we have been touching the world, so that's to be expected. S is drying out finally after Venice,  where he couldn't help but walk through every puddle in his path. We have done some laundry, well actually J did the wash and the machine malfunctioned and he lost his money and his soap, but we didn't wash everything.We are all prpretty dirty as it's spring here and spring equals mud when you have kids. Well that's all for now.