Venice

We left the mountains and drove south towards Venice. We looked for possible places to stay (with all our campsite books and guides) before going on the causeway to Venice. The sea was very shallow and there was a huge industrial area to the south and we could just see Venice’s roof tops to the left. We turned towards the cruise ship dock and parking. We could stay with the campers and buses for 37 euros for 24 hours. After lunch and trying to get on some relatively tidy clothes we walked to the top of the grand canal and the train station. We got a pathetic map at the tourist booth in the train station and set off in down the main ‘street’. The canal was bust with service boats, wooden taxis and the occasional man with a striped sweater and hat standing on the back of a gondola. It was quite cold in the wind and shade and we didn’t get lost til we turned down a little alleyway. Unlike Amsterdam. Venice had no bicycles or cars only bots and lot’s of people walking. All the Italians wore coats, scarves, sunglasses and high heel boots. There were lot’s and lot’s of shops that distracted our eyes from the building and alleyways. There were Venetian and Murano glass shops and we watched people sculpting beads, jewellery and little animals. Some of the price tags were over 3000 euros. We saw huge simple pizza and lot’s of different flavoured ice cream in the Pizzeria and Gelatarias. Other shops sold different coloured and flavoured pasta. The was chocolate, blueberry and curry flavoured spaghetti and green, blue and pink heart-shaped , penis shaped and gondola-shaped pasta and bow pasta with the Italian colours. We walked through lot’s of shops selling colourful, extravagant masks. We followed the yellow signs to St. Marco square which sometimes pointed left and right. We crossed lot’s of bridges (which weren’t wheelchair accessible and were offered lot’s of rides on gondolas for special prices on some of the smaller canals. The buildings were about three stories high and it was weird being closed in and not being able to see above the city. We reached St. Marco square which was full of tourists and flocks of pigeons that flew up un our shoulders and arms when we fed them biscuits. The Basilica was half under restoration so it didn’t look like the postcards. We tried three attempts to get into the church and discovered they didn’t want us t have bags, camera and where shorts (and dad always wears shorts). The roof inside was made if lot’s of tiny gold tiles and the floors and walls were all marble and weren’t as over whelming as other churches we’ve been in. We walked through lot’s of little quieter streets and alleyways on the way back but made it through the maze in the end.


The next day we ended up in the university. There were lot’s of hidden churches around every corner .and we were trying to work out if the beggars outside them were genuine or scams. We ended up on the southern end of town and once or twice walked down a long narrow alleyway which dead ended at a canal. It was high tide and streets were wet and some were flooded. The water was a little smelly and definitely not for swimming in. The map for the public transport system was more complicated the the London tube and the stations and boats were packed but we only walked. There were lots of artists painting and we some how ended up with a guy trying to sell us his art, he was really aggressive and hacked off when we managed to sneak away. We walked back to our camper before our parking tickets expired and left Venice driving south towards Rome.