Venice

Venice is another crazy mad Italian city. The streets and canals have no rhyme or reason to where they go. You think you are going heading in one direction, but the streets twist and turn, there's a dead end, and you end up somewhere completetly different. Full of tourists with maps in their hands trying to work out where they are! (Like us.)


We got to Venice about 3.30pm, and got a water bus (vaporetto) to San Marco and found our hotel (which was no easy task with these crazy streets). Then we had a wander around and found somewhere nice to have a drink and dinner. For some unknown reason we didn't take a map, but managed to get back to hotel alright. You definitely can't be in any hurry to get anywhere, but you can't get too lost on an island (yeah right).

The waters are never still. There are always vaporetto, water taxis, private boats, delivery boats, and gondolas moving about where ever you look.

Some canals are quite narrow and we saw boats struggling to get passed each other quite often.

Here's Richard using his orienteering skills to find our way back to the motel.

We didn't go in to any of the churches or museums, we just wandered around. There was just so much to look at. There were shops and restaurants everywhere too.

We only spent 24 hours in Venice, but that was probably long enough for us. Even though the place was madly busy, it was laid back. Richard asked one of the guys at the hotel what the population of Italy was, and got the reply "60 million angry Italians". We said they don't seem angry, and the guy said they keep it inside. We haven't come across any angry Italians, they all seem very calm, and although they toot a lot when they drive it's more to let people know where they are rather than in anger. Even the boats tooted a lot in Venice. A crazy madly busy country with masses of people everywhere looking calm.