It's OK everyone, the need to visit Venice before it sinks is no longer there. The boffins have discovered that Africa is moving North at a rate of knotts, pushing Venice up out of it's sinky doldrums with a new lease on life. Hopefully it'll go in for a makeover soon.

We had 2 nights in Venice, which is unlike any place on earth (that we've seen anyway). There's no danger of getting run over crossing the road if you forget which direction to look, unless you've taken an illegal swim in the canal.

We didn't feel the need to rush around looking at all the sights that we were supposed to see. Instead we pretty much wandered around the streets with a rough idea which direction we were headed and got pretty lost in the labyrinth that is Venice. We took a water bus along the grand canal, and checked out piazza San Marco (the main attraction of the city). The Basilica in the Piazza was pretty amazing, with it's golden mosaic tiled ceilings and intricately patterned marble floors. The clock in the square has two bronze dudes with hammers that whack a bell on the hour (and a few minutes before) but they were a little untheatrical about the whole deal. I guess it's hard to be showy when you're arms are cast to a great big mallet. Apparently another attraction of the Piazza is to buy a bag of bird food (or possibly pieces of chopped up rubbish) to feed the pigeons. There were swarms of the bloody things climbing all over people's hands, arms, and heads. For the life of me I can't understand why anyone in their right mind would pay good money to have filthy "rats of the sky" as I like to call them flocking all over themselves. I'd actually pay at least 10 euros to have some kind of pigeon repellant device to keep them away from me!

They say the world is getting smaller, and an experience in Venice confirmed this for me. On two consecutive days wandering around Venice we bumped into Allan Monks and his wife. Both times he crept up behind me and surprised me. For those of you who don't know Allan, he works in the same Area at Hydro Tasmania as me, sits at the desk next to me, and used to give me a lift to work at New Norfolk. Very random.

Overall the city is great, but so many of the buildings are in bad need of some external TLC. I guess the tourists will keep flocking here for the quirky canals, but any other tourist city that was as delapidated as this would soon find itself losing out.

We're on a ferry on the way to Croatia at the moment, looking forward to some cheap relaxation.

Later, Paul.