Saturday 30 Sept 2017 The water taxi booked to take us to the Cunard terminal couldn't dock at our hotel door due to the high tide. The cabin of the taxi wouldn't clear the bridge so our helpful porter took charge of the luggage and manoeuvred us through 11:30am tourist traffic over the offending bridge to a large public dock. All ended well! The trip across the Grand Canal to the large terminus took about 35 minutes, through exhilarating water chop, I was very...

Wed 27 September 2017 We arrived in Venice by VFT (very fast train), speeds up to 250kph at about 2.30pm. Lovely trip. The country side looked so much like Umbria or Tuscany, lovely green fields, occasional vineyards, old stately homes, old, not so stately, farm homes. The train only stopped at four-five stations, Florence being one where two young Kiwi's joined our compartment of four. On arrival we caught water taxi which delivered us right to the small dock...