Having been drained of nearly all blood, Tom & Ian went down for breakfast - not very nice buffet and gave up trying to find something palatable.

Caught the bus into Venice - only €2 each. Took about 50 minutes, not the promised 30, but we got to more than we would've driving.

Bought a 'street' map at the termius and headed straight into it. Place was pretty busy with trains and buses disgorging and the hundreds mingling with those who'd driven in and the others disembarking from the 6 cruise liners that were tied up nearby.

Decided to head for the Rialto Bridge and St Marks Square via the most direct route, pausing to look briefly in the shop windows at the Murano glassware, leather goods and souvenir carnival masks and, at last, having an affordable gellato. Took in the Basillica Santa Maria Gloriosa - stunning decoration and architecture.

Photo opportunities every few steps and the place is pretty clean - certainly not as fetid as we were expecting (apart from one small area), although we were following the most popular route and therefore it might've been kept cleaner than the backstreets.

Finally made it to the Rialto just after lunch and jostled for position to take more photos. Then through a small alleyway and we burst into glaring sunshine in St Marks Square. Huge queue to go inside the cathedral and we weren't dressed for it, so decided to return the next day, early.

Since we like the glassware we decided to take a water-bus over to Murano for the afternoon. Very inexpensive travel - only €14 for 12 hours of unlimited travel by water or bus. By now it was very hot but fortunately Murano was very quiet. A quick demonstration on glass-blowing and then it was window-shopping - very lovely stuff but mostly out of our price range or too delicate to travel.

After a couple of hours we caught another bus to Lido and strolled along the waterfront, before catching another service back to St Marks and dinner on the waterfront. Then a final bus back to the main terminus (a great trip pretty much around the whole city) before catching a normal bus back to the hotel.