The longest day of the trip so far. We checked out on time (though at 8am, Clara was already outside our door and explaining everything to the people taking over our room) and dropped our bags at the station, ready for 12 hours of killing time until our train. We began with a vaporetto out to Murano, the island where all the glass factories are, and home to Murano glass (obviously). I bought myself a little glass pug as a souvenir. From there, we caught a vapor...

Today, we set out to properly explore Venice (with a detour via the station to check out the left luggage situation). We bought a 36 hour vaporetto (waterboat) ticket and set off to the Piazza di San Marco. The lines to get into the church were absolutely insane (it's not high season yet!), so we went in search of lunch and found a small cafe where we shared a plate of mixed cold cuts and a four seasons pizza (ham, mushrooms, artichokes, salami). This was to be ...

We got into Venice at 2:30pm and set off on a vaporetto through the rain (the first of our trip!) to our 'hostel'. When we found the square, we were met by the owner, Clara (a middle-aged Italian woman) and shown up into an apartment with three bedrooms, the other two housing three people in each. She insisted upon cash payment, despite having said she would take credit cards, and fairly abruptly explained the rules to us, before leaving us to settle in. While ...

An early start to get out to Vatican City in time for our tour (chosen based on reviews by Lonely Planet). Our guide was a short, slightly balding Irishman named Dara, with a definite sense of humour. Three hours of walking later and we'd seen the Raphael Rooms, the Sistine Chapel and the Basilica of St Paul punctuated by historical tidbits (did you know Michaelangelo painted a cardinal who criticised his painting of Judgement Day as the Devil, or that one pope ...

A very early morning - the villas arranged a transfer for us and 3 others at 5:45am, so that we would be on time for our 6:50 flight to Athens, and from there we had an hour's stopover until our 8:40 flight to Rome. The flights were fairly uneventful, as the first was so short they had to rush the drinks service, and the second had passably good food for breakfast (cheese pie, a bread roll with strawberry jam, and a natural yoghurt with honey).Once we landed, and...