We didn't have very high opinions of Venice after half a day there and decided to cut our stay short although this could have been influenced by the miserable weather. Most of the place is either incredibly touristy or full of overpriced brand name shops for the rich and famous, not really for the lower budget crowd, such as us. We finally managed to get off the tourist trail and find some lovely back alleys and canals worth seeing, but for all the hype that we h...

Explore the beautiful sites of Florence on a Saturday with lovely weather - how perfect does that sound? Apparently half the world thought so too, so we spent our first day in Italy crushed from crowd to crowd. When 9 out of 10 people on a very busy street (not even an exaggeration) are clearly tourists it's hard to not let that detract from your impression of a destination, particularly when we had just come from a quiet town in Slovenia. It did become a bit l...