Venice

26th - 28th August 2009

After enjoying our 4am room service Rice Bubbles and Juice, we said goodbye to the Hilton and headed back to the airport. It was surprising how many people were lurking around at 4.30. The line for bag drop was shorter than usual, but still a queue. We dragged our feet through security and had to wait for a bit to find out what gate we were leaving from. It was so full of people in the shop bit past security we actually couldn't get a seat and I had to wait 10 minutes to use the toilet!! We jumped on the plane for the 2 hour long flight to Venice. Flying with cheap airline Ryanair does have its downfalls. Although they claim to be flying to Venice, they are not. The main airport in Venice is Marco Polo, only a 10-minute boat ride away from the city. We flew into Treviso; A whole other city, an hour away by bus. We crammed ourselves onto the bus and tried to catch a bit of sleep before arriving in Venice.

We had to ring the accommodation people when we arrived so they could meet us at the place, and then we trudged up to our accommodation. It was so hot with all our packs on, sweat was dripping from every orifice. Half an hour of walking in the hot sun and we'd found our way to the apartment we were staying. It was in a really pretty place, right on the edge of the lagoon. It was an apartment with only 2 bedrooms, so we were only sharing with two other people, and the woman who ran it was really good; she gave us lots of good tips on places to go, things to see, where to eat etc. After dropping the bags and getting sorted, showers were needed and we set off for our first little Venice adventure.

We spent what was left of the morning and most of the afternoon just wandering around the area near to us. We found an awesome little restaurant to have lunch in; I had some filled pasta with a mushroom sauce, whilst Dan tried a carbonara. The food was much cheaper than I was expecting. Anyway, after walking around and just looking at everything, we both decided that the day was too hot (we'd even tried to cool down with yum gelato), and we were both tired and grumpy from being up so damn early, so we decided to take a little siesta. Our room wasn't air conditioned, but it did have a nice fan and windows, which opened out onto the water so it wasn't too bad. We showered, again, and napped for a few hours, before our bellies were ready for more good food.We headed back down to a little pizzeria we'd seen during the day for some yummy pizza. The pizzas were really delicious. They are very minimalistic in the toppings, but its actually quite good. Whilst enjoying our dinner we had a nice man who came and played an accordion for us and sang a little bit, then made us pay him; Not very nice considering we didn't even ask him to. I suppose that's a scam that we're now aware of….

Once we'd gotten back to our apartment the sun had set and it was a much more pleasant temperature, so it made sleeping much more easy. Although because we had to keep the windows open to keep the room cool, it meant that the room had filled with mosquitoes, and they tend to enjoy my blood. It was a lose-lose situation. Have the window open to be cool, and have my blood drained, or shut the windows, save my skin, but boil in the meantime. We opted to be eaten by the mozzies.

The next morning we were up and we had a plan. First we were going to go get waterbus tickets, and then we had a route all planned out. The only hiccup to the plan is that we didn't have any money to buy the tickets and we couldn't find any ATMs that worked. We had to stop for breakfast for our search and found some calzone type things. We sat in a little garden out the back of the eatery and enjoyed our brunch in peaceful, cool surroundings. We did eventually find an ATM and cashed up, purchased tickets and jumped onto a waterbus. We planned to make our way down the Grand Canal, with plenty of stops along the way, trying to save our feet as much as we could. First stop we made was at the Rialto Bridge. Apparently it's the largest in Venice and it has rows of shops on either side. It was packed with tourists, and people taking wedding photos and the lot, but it was good to have a look at. We then spent a while snaking our way through all the little alleyways and streets behind the bridge. There was so many food shops selling weird and wonderful things, Dan liked the dried black pasta, and the massive salamis. We found that we'd walked down quite a way and had ended up a few stops down from where we got off, so we jumped back on for another short journey down to the Campo Santa Margherita area. It's just a big square with lots of cheap restaurants, nice buildings and some market stalls.We grabbed a pizza and a pasta to share at one of the nice places, and hid from the sun at the tables under the massive umbrellas.

After lunch, we did a bit more looking around this area, and found an exhibition on the inventions of DaVinci, so we went to have a look. It was 12Euros to get in, so we gave it a miss. It didn't look all that big, (or exciting, judging from the stuff they had out the front to entice you in).

We jumped back on a waterbus and headed down to the San Marco area. After getting off the waterbus and walking up a very packed alley, we found ourselves at San Marco Piazza. An incredible looking square, with 3 sides all identical buildings, and at the other end, the Basilica San Marco. This place was enormous and there was people sweltering in the sun everywhere. We did a quick look around, and then were eventually drawn to the fantastic looking Basilica. The paint and the artwork on the outside of this place were pretty amazing, as was the queue to get in. We jumped on at the end of the line and waited patiently. We lost all patience when a group of natives just pushed in right in front of us; At least 30 of them. I wanted to yell at them, but didn't want to waste my energy. It didn't take long to actually get in, and we had a good laugh at the amount of women who weren't allowed to enter because they hadn't covered they're shoulders or legs. Or the ones who threw a scarf over them, only to be scolded at by guards 2 minutes later after they'd removed them. Inside the Basilica was pretty cool, very dark and gloomy. Lots of mosaics and murals up on the walls and roof, and lots of different areas within the church. We just followed the route around the inside, and didn't bother going into any of the other sections that cost money, basically because we didn't know what they were!

After heading outside we checked out the outside of the Palazzo Ducale, which sits next to the Basilica; Another impressive building, which houses a lot of art. We thought we'd save up our art eyes for Florence and Rome - Dan knows how I get with too much culture.

We filled in the day quite nicely, and decided that we should make our way back up to the north where we were staying for showers and regrouping. We'd also decided that we desperately needed to do some washing, and rather than just hand washing the small items, we thought we'd do it proper and find a laundromat. There was not one too far away, so we loaded up a massive bag and spent an hour washing and drying our clothes, for not a great deal of cash.

After dropping the clothes off we set off in search of dinner. We found another nice restaurant with the traditional food and drink. We were happy, but also wondering if we're ever going to get sick of the local food.After we'd eaten we jumped on a waterbus and did the whole length of the Grand Canal. We got nice seats on the front of the bus, in the open air, even though I had to have my toes stamped on by some mean man who didn't give a s***. I think Dan swore at him. We stopped off at San Marco again to find some gelatin. The lemon is my favourite so far, although the white chocolate was not far behind. We had to keep our heads down to avoid the darker skinned men trying to sell us knock off bags, belts, sunglasses etc. We took a different route, on the outside of the islands back up to our accommodation and headed inside to bed. It was nice to stay in a not so touristy area. We watched as every night the local older ladies would congregate on the benches outside and share sandwiches and talk. It was quite cute. One night one of them tried to speak with me, I did a shrug of the shoulders and "Si?". I think she realized I spoke no Italian.

The next morning we had our day planned again. We were going to spend most of the day hopping around the outside islands. First island was Murano - the glass island. The waterbus only took 10 minutes or so. We headed straight to the glass factory because we knew that they finished at 12, and it was almost 11. It didn't take us long to walk up there, but we had to wait until enough people showed up before they put on a demonstration. The guy made a weird looking vase, and a horse. He made it look so easy, but I'm sure it wasn't. After leaving the factory we spent ages, walking up the main street/canal, looking in all the glass shops (It was nice because they were all air conditioned too). The statues, plates, vases and jewellery etc were amazingly beautiful, and not overly expensive either. We found another little café thing for brunch, and Dan enjoyed a salami roll, while I had like a pizza wrap thing. It was like a base, rolled up with tomato and mushroom and ham. It was awesome. Murano have all these 'artworks' around the island, made of glass. My favourite was the massive hay bail, and they big spiky blue thing. We had to catch a waterbus to another part of the island, in order to make our next trip. The journey to the second island or Burano was much longer than the first one. It took about 45 minutes. But luckily we were out in the open, so the breeze was nice. Burano was apparently were all the lace was made, but it's not done so anymore. There were still a couple of lace shops, but we didn't even bother looking inside of them. The real attraction of Burano is the brightly coloured houses on the edges of the canals. They were really quite cute. We took the obligatory photos and wandered around for a bit, before heading back to catch another waterbus back to the main island. We got the best seats on the bus on the way back, nice ones on the back of the bus. I was impressed at the cemetery that we passed. It has it's own island, with massive walls, and what appears to be a garden inside. It was massive. On our way out, I felt a little disrespectful, but we did see a boat hearse heading to the cemetery, so I took a photo of it! We missed our next waterbus by a matter of seconds, so we decided that now would be a good time for some lunch. We grabbed a quick bite at a nearby café - I tried some risotto, while Dan had the worlds best ever Lasagna. Afterwards we jumped on another bus and headed over to Lido, a long skinny island not far away.

Getting off the waterbus and it was strange to think that we were still in Venice. Lido has cars, trucks, buses, bikes, motorbikes, and the whole lot. It's more like a beach resort. We crossed to the other side of the island (It wasn't very wide) and found ourselves at the blue moon beach. The beach was crammed with people of all ages, enjoying the hot weather and the nice water. Apparently over this side of the island, it's not too polluted, so it's ok to swim in. We took off the shoes and walked through the warm water and checked out all the different people there. We saw countless amounts of boobs, many more old saggy ones than perky ones, and too many pairs of budgie smugglers that I wish to remember. The bad thing was, that nearly every man at the beach, old, young, saggy, the lot, wore them. And I think they're smaller over here. There wasn't much fabric in some of the ones I saw - There was more leather on some of the old ducks sun baking.

After leaving the beach, with our retinas still partly intact, we retraced our steps back to the waterbus. We made our way back to the city, and had a few little things we needed to do. We purchased train tickets, bought dinner supplies from the supermarket, and wanted to find out about getting an Italian SIM for our wireless internet (we were not successful in doing this). I had to laugh that at the supermarket in the meat section, they had a picture of a pig for pork, cows for beef, chickens for chicken etc etc, and then I see a picture of a horse. Horsemeat. Ewww.. By the time we made it back to the apartment it was much later than expected. So we just cooked tea, packed the bags up and went to mozzie ridden bed.

That brings us to now - sitting on a 2.5hour train heading for Verona. We stuffed up and forgot to 'validate' the tickets at the station before getting on board. We still haven't seen a conductor yet to check our tickets, but I quickly read in our book, that we're up for a 20Euro fine for not doing so. We're planning to plead tourist if asked. Considering that the tickets were only 6Euro's each - charging us 20 for forgetting to shove it in a machine seems ridiculous!