10th September This morning we picked up our hire car from Piazza Roma in Venice. What we thought we would do was drop the car off in parking place and go back to the island for the morning, until we discovered that parking was 25euro. Plan B. Drive to Bassano del Grappa. This was our overnight stop on the way to lake Como. As the name suggests the region is a huge producer of Grappa. We stopped in at one of the distilleries to try some. Tastes like diesel fue...

9th September Today we went on a boat ride to the island of Murano. Very commercial and full of glass factories selling their wares. Still pretty and not as busy as Venice. This afternoon we got into the Basilica San Marco, not too much of a queue, not as impressive as I imagined. The mosaics are incredible but the rest, so so. I paid the extra and went up to the museum and verandah. The museum was very interesting as you could see the mosaics up close. Some pie...

8th September. Much more relaxed start to the day from yesterday. I forgot to mention that yesterday the boat trip into San Marco piazza took a lot longer than we thoughtit would. Our tour up the clock started at 10am and the boat landed at 10am. Run, run,run we made it and caught up to the tour guide. Today we allowed much more time to arrive for our "Secret Itineraries tour of the Doges Palace. It was very interesting and we went into the chambers of th...

7th September We arrived in Venice yesterday after a short drive from Treviso. After arriving in Milan at 7pm the night before it was a 31/2hr drive to Treviso. Thank God Basil, the GPS finally kicked in as I'm sure we wouldn't have got there with out him. After a few stops at the Autogrill we got in at around 11.30. We were delighted in Paris, amazed in Prague and words can't describe Venice. This little fish shaped island is Magnificent. The pictures don't...