Today we again woke to a chilly morning and after packing our bags we warmed up with a coffee and croissant, this is quickly becoming our routine to start each day. Rugged up and packs on we headed off to the train station, the walk taking about 45mins as opposed to the 30mins it would take without carrying packs.

We've come to love the train stations, watching the departures board in anticipation of your trains platform being assigned. This may be as late as 10mins before departure in some cases. They are a hive of activity and much more nostalgic than airports.
A few hours later we arrived at Santa Lucia station in Venice, we've actually decided to stay near Mestre on the mainland as we could get a bungalow for only €19 per night each at the camp ground "Camping Jolly". A hostel in Venice would be double the price.
It was now lunchtime and so we put our bags in the luggage holding area and set off to spend the afternoon exploring the canals, we'd head to the campgrounds later in the afternoon but wanted to use today to see Venice. The maze that is the canals can get you lost pretty quickly, but with a map in hand and a general idea of where we wanted to end up we found our way through.
We weaved our way through the small streets, crossing the canals whenever needed and eventually found our way through to St Marcs Square on the far side of Venice. Much of the square is currently under scaffold, a seemingly common site in the cities of Europe, with the rest of it covered with wall to wall tourists. Remember, this is not the peak season! Lunch was a pizza slice in an alley followed by liquorice by the waters edge, fortunately we were able to find clear space in both cases to relax and enjoy.
Our plan was now to spend the afternoon wandering around Venice and tomorrow to head out to explore the surrounding islands of Murano, Burano, Torcello and Lido. Tourists seemed to fill every possible inch of the small streets, like Paris and Rome the famous sites here can easily get lost under the sheer volume of people coming to see them.
Later in the afternoon after being satisfied with what we'd seen we made our way out of the canals to the bus depot looking for the #6 to get us off the island and towards camp. An hour later, after missing our stop, doubling back, asking for directions and walking 30mins we made it to our bungalow. The camp ground does run a shuttle every hour directly into Venice (only takes 15mins) but you need to reserve a seat the day before and you can only do that from reception, so it's no good for your initial arrival.
This one is a basic bungalow, 3 single beds, toilet, shower, sink, fridge and power. We had our fingers crossed for a tiny kitchen but it wasn't to be, however the on-site bar/restaurant is cheap and the pasta is exceptionally good so it gets the thumbs up from us. We booked a seat on tomorrow's 9am shuttle into Venice and the 9pm shuttle back to camp giving us a full 12hrs to Island hop and see as much as we could in our time here. With this in mind we took an early night, tomorrow would be a full day.....