Anne here: Today we visited three interesting buildings, had a two minute gondola ride, a wonderful lunch and finished a great day with a concert. We kept walking the three bridges and several steps from our unit to the Teatro Fenice- Phoenix Theatre- just about every day so decided to check it out. There is an audio- guided tour which explains the history of this well named theatre. Fenice refers to Phoenix and as did this fabled bird, the theatre burnt to as...

Anne starts today's blog: Today was an exciting day to be in Venice. As we headed out after eggs on beautiful grain toast for breakfast, we noticed that the canal had intruded a little onto the land and water was lapping very close to our main outside door. The people next door would need to walk through it to get out. We had another look for a good glass shop recommended by a friend but failed to locate it. We did locate the most expensive coffee to date - in t...

Mick again. The body clock seems to be closer to adjustment as it was all of 5 am - and still dark and quiet except for the gentle sound of the odd marine diesel - when I woke today. Big plans. We had located a group called La Bussola - The Compass- which provides free walking tours of Venice every day. Full of confidence we put ourselves down for both the morning and the afternoon three hour tours. Very Gilligan's Island, no? En route to the pickup point we m...

Mick on duty again. Our sleep patterns were a bit disrupted last night- residual jet lag and what I hope is the tail end of the cold I've had for a fortnight. I gave up on sleep about 6 and managed some communications with our host in Rome and the SMH cryptic before the day got under way properly. A few reflections on our first time staying in Venice - our previous visits were day trips. If someone said: "Hey. I've got a great idea. Let's build a city in a swam...

The big day - our 40th wedding anniversary, and we're spending it in Venice. Mick here How did we get here? We thought you'd never ask. From door to door it was a long 30 hours. To the airport. Queued behind the North Sydney Boys'Concert Band to check in. They were well behaved, but a lot of well behaved young men is still a lot of checking in, particularly with all the instruments. We , on the other hand were as free as birds, carrying only the 7 kilo carr...