We arrived in Venice on the 4th after a two hour bus ride from Rijeka to Trieste, and a two hour train journey from Trieste to Venice: it was a wonderful trip through Croatia, Slovenia and finally Italy. It did take us about 40 minutes to go through customs in Slovenia, but Jean did elicit a smile from the customs officer, the first smile on this trip from customs officers.

The train trip is not as scenic as the bus, but there is plenty of room and the ride is very smooth and nicely air-conditioned! We have a first class regional pass, first class is very good! Luxury seats that recline, tables for each person, 220 volt power outlets and plenty of space.

Venice! What an intriguing place, full of difference, people, color and noise. At first view it is not nice, dirty and renovation everywhere. In fact most places of interest, such as churches were not open or being renovated, the St Marco Piazza was half closed for drainage upgrades as this whole area floods over occasionally, and not when raining! So the sightseeing was a little disappointing.

We stayed in a B&B and were able to catch the river bus number 1 to within 300 meters & three bridges (with steps) of the Casa del Sara our B&B. Also this number 1 route was where we found most of the sights we wanted to see.

One of the highlights for us on this trip, well there were two! Firstly our B&B was more than we had imagined. It was very clean and the bed, oh so comfortable! We both managed two great nights sleep plus a couple of granny naps as well. We have figured out that when in Rome or Venice do what they do. Mostly people stop in the afternoon for a rest, between about 1-4pm because it is so hot, not everything is shut, but we took advantage of the lull and retreated to our B&B for a nap before venturing out again. This was easy done simply by catching the river bus with our 24 hour pass.

Secondly we found the St Marco Piazza, an enormous open area housing the Dogue's palace, (President?) and the Basilica of St Marco, a magnificent structure indeed.

The Piazza had many street stalls and shops where you could buy just about anything Venetian or Italian, plus many Somali's illegally selling designer bags, sunglasses and an assortment of other things, it is a souvenir hunters paradise. We have been on the lookout for some Venetian face masks, but we could only find 1,000,001 to choose from!!!

This was also a great spot to find and take a Gondola ride, which we did with a very friendly local character who assured us he could not sing but he kept us entertained with his whistling and singing. We were surprised at how very relaxing it was wending our way through the backstreet canals.

Back in the Piazza we sat for a drink and a bite to eat. There were musicians playing beautiful music and many people in the piazza feeding the millions of pigeons. We discovered that this place we had sat down in was charging a music fee, yes for the small ensemble that was playing, €6 each before you ordered anything, so we ordered a very expensive cup of tea and some blueberry juice and sat and relaxed listening to the lovely music. The piazza was a great find for us, so we ventured out agin the next night to discover the piazza overrun with thousands of students at their graduation ceremony. The noise was unbelievable! But everyone was as happy as could be, the graduates had wreaths around their necks or on their heads, and even though the piazza was full of people there were still a million pigeons!

Our final night in this amazing place over, and we headed for the rail station to catch the 8:50 train to Milan where we are staying for two nights before heading to Jean's dream city, Paris. We are both looking forward to this, but Milan is our next stop.