Hi! Welcome to our travel scrapbook. Let me introduce us, we are Brian and Nancy Edie, and we live in Washington State at the southern end of Puget Sound.

We hope that you will enjoy viewing and reading our travel scrapbook, and sharing some of the fun and adventure that we experienced on the Rick Steves' Venice, Florence, and Rome Tour. We have purposely not described everything that we did on the tour. Too much information and way too many pictures (1,700)! Instead we have tried to share some of the highlights that made the trip special for us, and hopefully, will inspire you to visit these three great cities.

This was our third Rick Steves' tour to Italy in four years. We hadn’t planned to return to Italy so soon, because we had visited Rome in 2006. However, while trying to decide on a 2007 travel destination, Brian was looking through the tour offerings on the Rick Steves' website. He found the March tour to Venice, Florence and Rome, which fit well with our schedule and budget. He suggested that we should consider returning to these three cities and I jumped at the chance. It was decided that quickly. How did I feel about the decision? -- Pure joy and excitement! Our travels in Italy have been wonderful. The friendly people, amazing history, world-class art and architecture, and superb food and wine all combine to make a great experience and marvelous memories.

We could hardly wait for the months to pass so we could return to Italy for another adventure. As usual, for us, there were lots of planning sessions - what to see and do before and after the tour and during our free-time, reservations to make, how many Euros to bring, how to trim the packing list even further, and so on. At last March arrived and we were once again flying the Arctic Circle route to London, and then on to Rome where we spent our first night before taking the train to Venice.

When we purchased our airplane tickets, we had intended to spend some extra days in Rome before and after the tour. Later, those plans got adjusted so that we could spend some time in Padua. We knew that the Rick Steves' Village Italy Tour starts there, and after researching the sights in Padua, we decided that it was a must for our travel itinerary.

The train trip from Rome to Venice went by quickly and soon we were standing on the edge of the Grand Canal. Always a WOW moment! We purchased our vaporetto tickets and were off to our hotel - Alberto Guerrato - located in an 700-year-old building near the Rialto Bridge. The staff was very warm and welcoming, but we had plans - off to Padua for the remainder of the day.

A special thank you to the tour “divas” at ETBD in Edmonds, Washington, who have been so patient with us over the years answering all our questions and requests for ideas and recommendations.

Thank you Rick for your tours, guidebooks, travel festivals, Saturday classes and PBS television programs. Without you, we wouldn’t have taken our first trip to Europe and now a whole new world of travel has opened up for us. Now we can’t get enough of travel! We have become independent travelers as well as tour travelers - so much to see - so little time.