31/08/2011 Day 22. Venice, Canping Venezia.

Got to the campsite about 1.30 this afternoon. The heat was so different to Switzerland, it's so much warmer again but luckily not as warm as Split. We hanged around the campsite for a couple of hours and then got the bus to the entrance of Venice, or Venezia as the Italians call it, or at least that's what I think they call it. We thought we'd head to San Marco's Square, I think it's the Piazza de San Marco in Italian. It took us 1 hour to find this, due to the windy and maze like alleyways in between the thousands of canals that roll through Venice. We had a little look around, down the grand canal and saw sights that looked like Casino Royale, James Bond film. What occurred to me though was that every picture I took was stereotypical Venice, everything I had seen on the TV happens, all the pictures of the boats are real. Instead of cars they have boats in between the different areas, it's crazy! But cool at the same time. We headed for some food after about 3 hours of walking around and amazingly ended up at Chinese Italian restaurant, odd I know! We all had pizzas and me, Aaron and Sam had a Spritz, a venetian cocktail they all love apparantly, god knows what it's made from but it was very nice! We got the bus home and had a little chill out again to prepare for heading into the bars of Venice later on, these closed at 1am because that's when the buses stop travelling to the mainland, I think that's the reason. As we were doing the usual mess about at the campsite two guys headed over to the van telling us they wanted to head towards Berlin. After I had spoken two words they realised we were English. I think A up give me away. They were Fin and Tyson, from Sandbach (near Macclesfield, if spelled right) and Stoke. They had been teaching windsurfing in Greece for 2 months and got the ferry to Venice. They wanted to hitchhike to Berlin and thinking we were German, could help them out. We had a bit of a giggle with them while they waited to get the bus into Venice with us so they could catch a train to Berlin direction and had a couple of my polish vodka with grapefruit juice. Grapefruit juice is horrible, never again! We headed into the university area, Santa Margherita or something like that where there was a big square with people drinking and having giggles. We asked for the Venetian cocktail Spritz and it was €2!! Bargain! We were on them all night and stood around chatting til around 12.30. At this point we headed back and me, Nick and Dave had a kebab. It was brilliant! Possibly better than the UK's only if it was a lot bigger. We got back to the campsite at about 1.20, we messed about using the Internet before bed and I stayed up writing this blog again til 2.02 and everyone else is asleep. I hope they're not up right early again because I might die! Good night peeps. Don't let the bed bugs bite!